Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Matchbox No. 29 Fire Pumper Restoration

Matchbox No. 29 Fire Pumper Restoration


Restoring and Rebuilding Matchbox Die Cast Cars


I've got a tub full of Matchbox, Hot Wheels and other die cast cars that I've always thought I'd like to rebuild and do some detailing and use them with my trains.  Generally, most of them aren't quite the right scale and lack details that you would find in any modern scale vehicles.

The one advantage they have is that they are really cheap.  I also have a personal affinity for the regular wheel Lesney cars of the late 1960's.  These were the toys that I first played with when I was a kid.  I always felt that the older Matchbox cars were better.  There was a point when Matchbox started making too many fantasy cars which was mainly the domain of Hot Wheels.

I still have all my originals safely in their cases, but I've accumulated a lot of the old 1-75 series that are in pretty poor shape.

Contrary to popular belief, they aren't valuable.  In general, the cost of these cars is between $1-$5.  Every year I seem to pick up about 10 or so more that are wired to various flat cars I buy at train shows.

First I need to plug an awesome video that got me excited about doing a much better job at these restorations:

YouTube Channel:
Angelo Bonsignore

Specifically this video:  

How to restore Diecast Cars from Nov 24, 2012


Here's the link:


This guy is really good at this and I hope he does some videos on this subject.  This video convinced me to get the Vibratory Tumbler from Harbor Freight.  Here's the link to that tool:


I plan to do this on my YouTube channel later, but I wanted to give you a taste of what can be done:

I had 3 each Matchbox No. 29 Fire Pumper Truck and this is how they looked when I decided they were going to be the models selected for this rebuild:


Pretty rough shape.  Notice they all have the Denver decal and 2 of them are missing the beacon.  None of them had the ladder.  Once I opened them up I was surprised to find the beacon was broken, but it was still on the inside.

I washed, stripped and polished them by hand.  In Angelo's video he uses the tumbler to get a much nicer finish than I got.  Then I used Rustoleum Sunburst Red, which I tend to use a lot to paint them.  I don't care for the 2x paints because they're a bit thick.  I also use a lot of the Rustoleum black, gray and white primers. For rust or brown primer I prefer Krylon.

This red is one of the few colors that can be baked or heated with the heat gun.  Here's an intermediate shot:


You can see that my metal wasn't as polished as it would have been if I used the tumbler, but that will happen on the next set of rebuilds.

The plastic hoses and the windshields were washed with dish soap and then I polished the windshields with a head light restoration kit.

I used 3M blue tape to hold the beacons and windows in place and I didn't use rivets to replace the bases.  I'll probably just do a drop of white glue there.  The nice thing about die cast vehicles is that you can do them over if you suddenly get much better at it like I did.

I wanted to have unique engine number instead of making a new Denver decal, so I went ahead and gave them some yellow numbers.  And here they are:


They turned out pretty nice and will look great at a fire station that I'll make some day.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 5

The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 5

Remnants


So what's left....in April 2016 here are some of the sad sights...



That's what's left of the main shop, paint shop, and everything between the freight shop and the museum.  In 2005 some developers along with the usual government employees claimed there was the perception of contamination and that's why this place is the way it is now.

The bridges leading into the shops a few years ago....


And now.....



that's what remains.

The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 4

The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 4

Evidence of the Existence of a Railroad


Gone now and very sad it is to see the site of the once mighty shops.  It feels like all the work that was ever done at this one place has been erased.  What remains will not mean anything to the future.  This is a last testament to what went before...  should power go off, then this too will disappear.

In the original plans, this was the freight car shop...




The above section is part of the old coach shop, which is had a second floor where they did upholstery and had 5 tracks coming in from the transfer table.

The unloading platform of the freight shop is a worn out place....

from the other end...


from above, a few years before...








The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 3

The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 3

The Run Through Maintenance Shop

Back in the day, CNW upgraded Oelwein to be capable of servicing 6 locomotives on 2 tracks in a block building on the east end of the shop... locomotives could be run in one side and out the other...

Here's a former Conrail SD45 next to the run through shop in 1991...

This is one of the rebuilt SD45's that came from Oelwein and was stored at the Harrison Street Shops at East Minneapolis Junction in 1994...


some former Conrail U30C that never got rebuilt, but were stored at Oelwein...


Here's the shop, it's that unpainted concrete block building... where the tracks enter at the top of the picture is right next to where the old Liberty Club was located.  It was a lavatory, locker room, meeting hall and reading room for the workers at the shops.


Where that rectangular hole is in the picture is where the old power house was located.  It had it's own deep water well and a large smoke stack...

Nothing but a pile of sand now.




The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 2

The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 2


The shops are gone now, but let's take a closer look at a couple features of this place....

Back in 1989 I saw Chicago & NorthWestern FP7 217 in the deadline outside the shops at Oelwein...


Not too long after, it was restored as Chicago Great Western 116A and kept at the museum.  I'm going to skip straight ahead to April 2016....


Up close, it's starting to look a little rough and about time for a new restoration...

Also in 1989 I found Chicago & NorthWestern SW1 616 (formerly Chicago St. Paul Milwaukee & Omaha CStPM&O or CMO 55)


It's still in need of a restoration in April 2016....


Here's the Old CGW Roundhouse which is still in use as of April 2016, although there hasn't been a turntable in a very long time.....


Moving on....





The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 1

The Ghosts of Oelwein Part 1

I've been meaning to get around to doing something about the old Chicago Great Western (CGW) and later Chicago & NorthWestern heavy repair shops in Oelwein Iowa.  The shops are gone now.  But let's take a look at how it was....

First, here is a link to some interesting info about the construction of the shops:

http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6327&context=annals-of-iowa

The part that interests me is where a transfer table was described as being part of the original design.  The table itself was long gone the first time I ever got a look at the place back the late 1980's.  That would have been something to see though.  When I look at the aerial photos, the outline is of the transfer table pit is easy to spot.  It also fills in the void where something doesn't look quite right about the track arrangement.  There's 1000 feet of shop there, but half has no tracks leading to the doors.  That's where the table came into play.

Let's take a look at some photos from Bing Maps Bird's Eye View.... here's the remainder of the Oelwein Shops shortly before they were torn down...


You can see the tracks coming in over the drainage ditch.  The picture is extra large, so go ahead and take a closer look.




When you take a closer look you can see where the transfer table used to be.

Next up, let's look at a couple old historical photos and a post card....




So that's how it was...