C&N Railroad Project - The Ore Cars

These kits actually arrived last Friday but the weekend, once again, was so busy I didn't really have a chance to look at these until late on Sunday. We had to put down my oldest son's cat, she was only six but had developed a tumor that was taking over her stomach, she was a sweet thing and will be greatly missed. A lot of time was spent at the Vet's office this weekend, definitely not high on my places to visit.

These are old Taurus Product Ore Cars and have been out of production for some time. I had built a number of these in HO scale so I knew they were just about perfect to represent the fleet of ore cars on the C&N. I have been looking for these online for a couple of months now and this batch just showed up on eBay. The price was a little hefty though, about $25 a kit and I really only wanted one. However, I don't know when they might show up again so I bit the bullet on this one and bought the lot. The HO version had enough material for two cars but the O version only has enough for one.

Eventually I would like about 20 of these for the layout but six is a good starting point. Since there is a very nice parts list in the box I shouldn't have any problem building the rest from scratch. This is definitely not a shake the box kit and I'm looking forward to diving in and working on the ore car fleet.

Everything you need in handy sticker marked bags. I don't see a problem finding the components to scratch build the rest of the fleet but those etched parts could be a problem. The kit is definitely showing its age with all the paper products starting to brown with age. There was a little NMRA "coupon" (on the left) to join the organization included in the bottom of the box.

These are definitely showing their age both with the browning of the paper and the typeset.

The last page of the instructions, the all important parts list! If anything is missing I don't think I'll be able to use that coupon though.

The diagram, also very important for future iterations of the fleet.

#2 in importance right after the parts list, the templates! I'll be sure to make some good copies of these for future use.