Quick And Cheap Wheel Car

While I was browsing on eBay, I found a couple of sellers who make wheel car loads (you can probably find them if you go to the site and search for something like "HO wheel car load".) They seem to be reasonably priced, but I began to realize I had the materials on hand to make a wheel car load myself. I replace the plastic wheels in Accurail kits with metal ones, and I've kept so many that I had plenty.

I also looked at prototype photos I've taken of wheel cars. I noticed they don't really look like the loads for sale on eBay. For instance, here's one:

As opposed to the eBay loads, the prototype often has wheels nested between each other in alternate rows, and there's an outside bar on which they rest.

So I gave this some thought. What I did was lay out a piece of wax paper, and then I nested wheelsets in alternate rows, up to a length short of 50 feet. I cemented them together with CA glue. I did it against a steel ruler to keep the string straight. Then when the string was dry, I added some Evergreen styrene strips that I had on hand, two to the outsides and two to the insides behind the inner wheels in the string. Then I added short end pices.

I cleaned off any accumulated CA from the assembly with acetone applied with a cotton swab. Then I sprayed the assembly with Krylon black from a rattle can, followed by Testors Rust enamel from my airbrush, thinned with acetone. Here's the result, mounted on a Walthers Trainline D&RGW work flat:

This took part of a morning and part of an afternoon and cost almost nothing.