CB&Q NE-10 Waycar Resin Kit

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 The Burlington’s steam era waycars (cabooses) all had a similar look: wood construction, offset cupola, and 3 or 4 side windows riding on ancient wood beam passenger trucks.  The NE-10 class was notable for being the first class of steel waycars on the Q and looked much like steel versions of the wooden ones.  They were built by the CB&Q's Aurora shops in 1930 and were the newest waycars on the system until the mid 1950's.  By the time of my modeling era (late 1940's) several NE-10's had been equipped with radios and an underslung battery box to power the equipment.  

I picked up a resin kit produced by Q Connection to model one of these radio equipped NE-10's.  Walthers has produced very good models of the earlier wood waycars, but the Q Connection kit is the only option outside of brass to model the NE-10.  


I've built several resin kits, and the casting quality can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.  This kit was definitely one of the cleanest.  No modifications were needed outside of normal parts cleanup with an Exacto knife and files.  The result was a beautiful model bristling with details like the wagon wheel antenna, brake equipment, and roof vents.  I added cut levers and brake hoses from my parts bin to complete the model.

The kit comes with cast details to represent two kinds of signal lights applied to these cabooses.  I decided to go an extra step and add working lights to these.  The castings were slightly too small to fit the 3mm LEDs I had in my parts box, so I made replacement parts from square styrene stock.  I added electrical pickups to the backs of every wheel made out of phosphor-bronze wire.  It took several trial and error adjustments to bend the wire into the correct shape to make an electrical connection without putting too much friction on the wheels.



I washed the car body with dish soap to prepare for painting and airbrushed with PolyScale D&RGW Freightcar Brown that I had on hand.  Once dry, I masked and sprayed the black roof color.  The masking tape pulled up a few small spots of the brown, but they were easily touched up with a brush.  I brush painted details like the antenna, smoke jack, and brake hoses to make them stand out.  I used Micro-Scale decals to finish the project.




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