Last week on my Facebook page I announced my next 3D modeling project, a HO scale model of the Valley's 500 series cars. These are also known as the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Boonton cars. Commuter cars with a feature of railroading past. Open vestibules but with all steel construction.
These cars were build in 1914-1915 era when the railroads were switching from wooden to all steel construction methods. It was an interesting era where design elements and looks from the past still carried over to the new steel bodies, like the open vestibules. This new type of construction also let to new methods of construction. For these cars this meant that all of the steel panels were riveted to everything.
These cars would make a rivet counter go mad!!! There are so many just along the sides of the cars for the body alone, forget about the windows and all of there different panels and sashes.
Now I don't consider myself a "Rivet counter" when speaking about Model Railroading. I have cut some corners on projects because I am happy with the way it looks or to help me getting frustrated that I don't pull my hair out.
Before I started on these cars I did not think about how many individual rivets I would need to model and yes the way I build the model I add ever one by hand. There is over 1200 on just one side of the car alone.
This may take a bit longer than I originally thought. Oh well, the light at the end of the tunnel is that I only need to finish one side before I use copy and paste for the other and that the future 600 cars use the same sides as a base.............................Wish me luck!!!
