1:1 and 1:87 Caboose

[sjgardiner]

So, this is slightly blatant self promotion on behalf of the Toronto Railway Museum where i volunteer, but i wanted to post pictures of our first completed full restoration project, the Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo Railway caboose Number 70.  it's taken almost four years from when we opened it up from under its plastic wrap and started the restoration process in earnest.  Over fourty volunteers have come and gone and made a contribution to the project, some people for only a weekend, others for almost every weekend through that time.  The volunteers are proud of our accomplishment and being able to demonstrate the skills we had coming into the project, and the new things we've learned doing it.

 

Some pictures of the finished project:

Neville and i installing the vinyl transfer letters on the Caboose to finish the project.

 

Side view of the Caboose with the lettering (and one of the non authentic for red but pithy TH&B Safety signs re-installed)

 

For reference, what it looked like in the TH&B Yellow scheme when we started work.

 

Interior Photos, haven't had a chance to take any when it hasn't been full of visitors!

 

The Completed caboose moved out to the Railway Village by Don Station and Cabin D so it is more accessible to the public.

 

And, though I've posted this before in the work in progress thread, during the restoration project, i completed an HO Scale model of the caboose to give inspiration to the team and for my collection of models of the Toronto Railway Museum collection.  The HO Scale model for comparison with the real deal caboose above.

 

 

 

Next project on tap, 89' of Solarium in the form of Canadian Pacific Railway/Upper Canada Railway Society Solarium Lounge car Cape Race.  The initial phase of restoration for this project involves completing the roof and repairing all the windows to make the car water tight so it can be moved back outside, while work on assessing how much work the interior needs (hint its a lot!!) and fund-raising/planning for that work.

 

-Stephen

[davknigh]

Great work Stephen. Any particular reason you went with the red rather than the yellow?

 

Cheers,

 

David

[sjgardiner]

Great work Stephen. Any particular reason you went with the red rather than the yellow?

 

Cheers,

 

David

 

Hi David, there are various reasons, including the decision to restore it to the condition it was when it received the steel siding in the mid 1950's to replace the original life expired wood; that we're in Toronto and there was an slight (and mostly mocking) aversion to repainting it in the Hamitlon TigerCats football team paint scheme that the yellow is;  an understanding that people understand the little red caboose; that paint is temporary and can be changed with money and time; and budgetary, the red paint was an off the shelf match for what we found beneath the yellow in doing paint samples vs a custom colour that was outside the scope of the budget (budget was approximately $0.00, and i'm only semi-joking about that) for the project.

 

As those in the UK know all too well, paint at least is temporary and can be changed with the right amount of $$.  If our restoration work is as good as we hope, now that the caboose is weathertight and the rot removed and replaced with good wood, hopefully it will last long enough to need just a repaint, at which time, who knows what colour paint will be used!

 

Stephen