Nn3 Carson & Colorado Ventilated Boxcar

The project is now finished, and, as always, I learned a little about yet another railroad. 

The story? Well, it was inevitable that I built something in Nn3, as I have been building in N and Z, so it was just a matter of time before I married the two. These shots are taken on my Z Scale module. It's remarkable how well Nn3 cars integrate into a Z scene. In fact if it were not for the tie spacing, people might not notice!

The project starts like this: Steve Wesolowski stops by with a narrow gauge book, and grand visions of a flatcar. I start thumbing through and see this beauty! Oh, have I got to have one! Maybe several!

So we goof around with the idea a couple weeks, figuring out details like making the doors slide open, the under frame, etc. Then we come up with C&C 356. I don't know how many like it were produced, but we have another version already worked out to build next, and then the standard box too.

I wanted to play with the camera and here is my Night Shot:

I had thought .012" wire for the brake wheel rod was going to be nice and stiff, however it looked rather unruly, so that went on the must fix list. Anyways here you can see that the louvers are see through if you look inside the boxcar and see through the vents on the other side. I used the smallest Nut/Bolt/Washer castings I could find for the ends of the truss rods, but they are HO scale.

After about a month of working on the models every weekend, we had addressed all the fix list items. What did we do? First was to use .006" wire for the grabs and .008" for the brake wheel. Next was to add a doorstop. Third was to measure the completed model, and make model size adjustments to match the drawings. Fourth was to add more prototypical coupler pocket. Fifth was to add the car corner braces. Sixth was the under frame piece that is visible from the bolster to the car ends. And last was the addition of a part to make the trucks look more like Thielsen trucks.

Oh! Well you look at that.  Some 'bo just took up residence tonight, and what is he doing, playing the Harmonica?

Here is the unpainted car so you can see some of the changes, including the trucks.

Here is how the finished cars look:

I was asked by members of the Yahoo Nn3 group if I would make this project into a kit. Well, since I was already making some for Steve and myself, why not. The only hard thing to do was to write instructions.