SPMW 7021A (Part 5) Wrecker - Rail & Tie Car

Ok, time to wrap up this build.  In SPMW 7021A (Part 4), I finished most of the fabrication of the plastic parts of the rack and painted it.  Now it's time to build the wooden parts and install the last grab irons.

Let's work on the running boards!

Staining & Fabricating the Running Boards

I decided to build the top running boards from strip wood 1x8 boards.  The boards are cut into shorter sections which land on the support frames, which are only 0.040" wide.

Top boards coming together.

The stain were primarily made from AppleBarrel (20366E) Dark Gray in water.  I stained full strips of wood.  This required me to come up with a way to stain the full lengths of strip wood.  I ended up wetting the board with water, then applying the paint with a brush.  Quickly, I then reverted to "finger painting" pulling the paint down the board between two fingers.  Then some light blotting with paper towel.

Third running board on the left side of the rack installed

I also painted the inboard sides of the tie-rack end bulkheads, which are plastic 2x6s, the same rough color as the board stains, so that it looks like any paint on those boards was knocked off and roughed up from the ties shifting around.

Canopy glue drops ready for the last board on the right side of the rack.

I used canopy glue throughout the process of attaching the boards to the roof.  This works pretty well, I did weigh down some of the board joints with a piece of 1/4x1/4" steel bar until the glue set.

Completed high-level running boards.

I was hoping that the wooden running boards would add structural strength and rigidity to the model.  Thankfully it did just that.  I can now gently pick up the car from the rack frame without the rack flexing like it did before having the running boards installed.

B-end running boards.

I had to patch a little bit of paint on the end of the right side running board where I trimmed it short and nicked the frame's FCR paint.

Cropped end of running boards.

There was a slight distance mismatch on the B-end, resulting in the end walkway couldn't be made with 1x8 boards, but they had to be cut down to 1x6s.  I still need to fabricate and install the hand brake staff and install it on the B-end.

Running boards over the frame truss structure, possible storage racks?

I'm still debating if there were any boards under the running boards.  Some of the prototype photos show what might be some form of crane cables layed under the running boards, over the main deck.  I may fabricate some cables and see if they can be made to fit in the future post on building the load.  If there were boards forming additional rack storage space there.  The flip side of that is, would they have had "head-klonkers" there or did they keep the space clear if a crewman had to climb into work on the rails and frogs, etc on the main deck.

Fabricate Tie Rack Floor Boards

I decided to make the tie rack boards removable.  The prototype photos don't show if there are floor boards forming a bottom to the tie area, but it seems logical that the wrecker crews wouldn't want to have ties dropping down into the truss if they were shorter than the spacing of the cross beams, or if they shifted with slack.

I am planning to make the tie load removable as well, so there's also some factor of "I want to be able to see all the cool cross bracing of the truss.

Random bits of stained 1x8 strip wood cut to length of the cross frames

I decided to build the tie rack floor with more 1x8 strip wood.  0.010"x0.060" plastic strip and some split 1x8 (down to 1x4) wood strips are also used to supplement the cross pieces.  I don't want any adjacent board joints at the same frame.  The under cross ties are going to be slightly offset from the rack frames.

Mixing up the stained boards to make the floor obviously made from different boards.

I mark the underside of the boards with mechanical pencil, so that I can apply the canopy glue to precise locations.

Floor coming together.

I liked that a couple of these pieces of strip wood have chips out of the side of the boards.  I decided that I wanted a couple of "missing boards" to show the rack frame structure.

Here's the first shot of the rack installed.

I had to cut about 0.015" off the edge of the floor to fit into the rack.

Nail/bolt heads marked with mechanical pencil.

The floor boards are getting wrapped up at this point, I decided to do the pencil tip nail marks on all the boards.

Corner Grabs

Custom bent corner grab irons.

Bent wire grab irons using rems of 0.009" PB wire.  These are custom measured to fit the A-end of the rack.

0.015" holes drilled for corner grabs.

Holes are drilled above the inboard end posts and on the last horizontal brace under the longitudinal running boards.

Grabs installed with small drops of ACC glue.

The corner grabs are last non-standard detail I'm planning to put on the model.  The brake staff and linkages will be the final parts, but that will take a bit more to do and I'll probably hand paint touch up those when it's in place.

In Closing

Lower angle photo of the nearly finished car.

In the next post on this topic I'll be getting into building the load for the tie rack and the main deck load of rail, points, frogs, etc.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

SPMW 7021A (Part 1) Wrecker - Rail & Tie Car - Starting kitbash

SPMW 7021A (Part 2) Wrecker - Rail & Tie Car - New Bulkheads and Rack

SPMW 7021A (Part 3) Wrecker - Rail & Tie Car - Adding Details to Rack

SPMW 7021A (Part 4) Wrecker - Rail & Tie car - Finishing Plastic Parts & Painting Rack

Kitbashing OwlMtModels F-50-Series Flatcars (Part 1)

Modeling SPMW 7021 the Bakersfield Wreck Outfit (Part 1)

Modeling an MOW Supply Train (Part 1)

Modeling SPMW cars with Musical Parts (Part 1)