As promised in a previous thread, here is the start of my composit caboose. Since Life-Like is a dead-on model for the steel caboose, I took one of my spares to hack up, and will use it as a template. I would have scribed the sides to make it easier, but I would have needed to sand down the rivets and make it perfect, and even then my scribing is horribly crooked and impossible to do a full side. So here is my sheet styrene so far. It's really difficult to cut these tiny squares out with an x-acto knife without taking long breaks in between (gotta save the fingers!!). Because I am not going to be "taking it apart" I am not making it exactly the same as these snap-together pieces. I'm going to glue to cupola directly to the main body.

The roof an cupola roof will be preserved and glued to the sides, not going to spend much time on fixing something that isn't that broken. On this note, does anyone have a roof-top view of any class NMn? I will need to sand down the rivets at least, and add the seam on the correct axis on the cupola, but don't know if tehree are panels on the top of the roof, or if it is all completely smooth on top.

to bad you are not modeling HO. Sparrows Point Division of Bethlehem Car Works has a laser cut conversion kit for the RDG NMn/L&HR wood cabooses.

If I was modeling HO, I wouldn't need to scratchbuild anything! I'd probably have a little more hair on my head too...28 years old and its starting to get thin...way too early!!

Update. This is by far the most ambitious project I have undertaken so far. I try to avoid completely building things from scratch but this is actually been pretty fun.

I finished all of the pieces except the cupola roof. As shown below, you see the braces I used to make the corners square and give the thin styrene some strength for handling. I will have to wait to complete the whole thing until the separate assemblies are painted, so i can put in clear windows. I curved some braces out of strip styrene to maintain the roof's curve and give the cupola a surface to glue to below the roof line when it goes on. I messed up cutting the roof of my donor caboose, so I had to use sheet styrene to make the roof. Wish I would have known i was going to tcut too much off the roof, i would have saved that caboose. I pre-bent the sheet styrene to minimize the stress on the curve and hopefully prevent it from breaking loose from the body. I think the glue will be plenty strong to hold it on.

That's good work. Your hair loss is due to the crzy north of you!

yeah he is working us hard...

one more update until i start painting...decided to go ahead and finish the cupola and test fit everything before calling it a night..