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Still not had anytime to work in The Shop to any extent.  Assembled the main beam for the 2nd Ingoldsby, seems GOOP works better for assembling plex than CA.  Perhaps this weekend I can get some detail work done on them.

I’m thinking on revising my hopper car plans.  The Ingolddsbys may be the entire 50 series class with the two bay hopper bottms becoming the 60 class.  I will prolly build a few shorter (height wise) cars  just to use up the cutoffs of the tee shapes.  Might need to rescale the center beams of the hopper bottoms since I’m able to use a smaller steel rod than originally intended.  I believe I’ll whack off an 18” piece of styrene and see how many hopper sides I can get out of it and work from there.

I’m starting to think about some tank cars.  With 5 wooden hoppers and three steelies that’s gonna make a really decent coal drag. Do I simply add a tank to an existing flat for a tanker, or come up with a steel frame car purpose built?

Thursday June 3, 2004 1200

I believe an batch of 4 more Hopper bottom cars are in order, I can get 8 car sides per chunk of styrene and that should put a pretty good dent in the amount of plex I got onhand too.  I prolly need t spend a little quality time with the tablesaw as well to make the a frames for the hopper centers and the blocks for the hoppers, then see how much plex, angles and tees I got left.

I believe I will make the next boxcar, 307 a composite car, steel frame with wooden sides will make it a bit easier to assemble without having to deal with  trussrods and such.

Friday June 4, 2004, 1430

Got a little bit done in The Shop this morning.  Assembled the  the car body and the frame for the 2nd flatbottom hopper. I think instead of doing the proper Ingoldsby latches on 51, I’ll just make it an extensition  of the old wooden cars.  I might even make it as simple as a lock pawl on each end operated by a crank like the ones on the sides.  I need to assemble the trucks, mount them and add the car body.  STILL have not had the opportunity to make the master for the coupler adaptor.  Mebbe this evening.

Gonign to hunt for a building to move The Shop into this evening or tomorrow.  Need the room in the house with Katie and Karen moving in .  Park it right outside next to the RR and will be able to build purpose built work areas inside with lots of storage.  I can salvage an AC unit from Karen’s house to put in it and a space heater for the winter.