Working on my 'Stash'

Ok not this type of Stash

Rather the other Stash, the one all Railroad Modellers have have hiding away, under our layouts, in the closet etc.

All those unbuilt freight car projects.....

Heres part of mine.

I'll admit it, I'm a freight car junkie.  Boxcars in particular.

I've got another 2...... ok 3-4 piles about the same size.  The photo above shows my Stash of undecorated Intermountain Railway 40' boxcars.  There's PS-1's and 10'6 Modified AAR Cars.  Two of them may be factory painted.  I'm going to kit bash these into various CN, CP and NorthEastern Roads. Most will be CN.  Most if not all will be painted and weathered for 1965-1966.  This is about 10 years earlier than my current layouts time frame.  There all for a future project that's in the planning stages.  More about that later....

I started this whole exercise by going through my entire Stash and deciding what I can use on the Algonquin, what I can use on the future project and what I should just sell or give away.  

Before I get to the pile here, I pulled out 5 other kits, to get things started.  Two Blue Box kits           (1 Reefer and 1 50' flat car), a Tichy Flat Car, an InterMountain PS-1 and a Walthers CN Newsprint Car.  These will all be for the Algonquin Railway, except for the reefer.

Here are a few progress photos.

Athearn Flat with Tichy staff brake wheel installed.  I added wire grabs and A-Line Stirrups and sanded the ribs off the top of the stake pockets to better represent ones used by the Canadian car builders.

 Athearn Reefer with brake rigging added.  I moved the fuel tanks to the middle of the car after the picture was taken.

 I added a sill extension to the reefer to better represent the prototype CP car.  Wire grabs and Tichy Stirrups were also added.  I left the moulded on ladders, and removed the roof walk and filled the holes.  I masked the car with Tamiya tape and then painted the ends and the lower sills black.

 The masking tape removed some of the car numbers so I will have to use decals to replace them.

I added Plano walkway end platforms to the CN Newsprint car.

I painted the flat car black and started to weather the plastic deck, to look like wood using the "Tichy method".  I also cut off the brake wheel stand on the flat car and filled the side and added rivet decals to replace the missing ones, where the break stand was.

I plan to add cut bars to all of the models also.

My plan is to blog regularly,  showing the progress on my Stash and hope it encourages you to dig out your stash and get working on it.