Modeling Non-Revenue & Cabooses
Modeling the Cabooses and Non-Revenue cars of the Danville & WesternCabooses
The Southern style center cupola caboose is simple enough to model, because kits are available from Funaro & Camerlengo, and the Smoky Mountain Model Works kits are still relatively easy to find in shops and on line.
X304 is a slightly different story. I am not aware of any accurate HO scale model, which means kitbashing or scratch building. The Walthers DM&IR wood caboose is probably the closest thing available. As with the rest of the D&W equipment, there are no decals available.
| This is my first attempt at X304. It was kitbashed out of a Roundhouse 34' wooden caboose, with the body and roof cut up and rearranged so that the windows are the same distance from the ends, and the cupola is centered between windows 2&3. The roof is bowed because it has not yet been glued down in the photo. The lettering was done using a Railroad Roman alphabet set, one letter at a time. |  | ||
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| John says this was inspired by a photo of a Carolina & Northwestern car, and given an older "D" number. He figures that it would have been replaced at some point when side door cabooses fell out of favor. |  | ||
| John also built a model of X304, using a Walthers wooden caboose. |  | ||
| Of course, after building my version of X304 above I found new information, including drawings. It turns out that both the above models are much longer and taller than the prototype, so I started in on another Roundhouse model. This one is still in the works, and has a long way to go. After shortening the body, I decided that the sides were too tall, and I am now in the process of making new sides for the model. You can see the number of cuts I had to make, and in retrospect it probably would have been easier to simply make new sides out of styrene. | |||
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Non-Revenue
Without having seen any of the MOW cars on the D&W, it is virtually impossible to say what kits might be suitable, or how to best model them. Any car would probably have to be kit bashed, starting with a 34' box car. The following companies offer a 34' box car, as far as I have been able to determine.
Funaro & Camerlengo
La Belle
Trout Creek Engineering
Ye Olde Huff n' Puff
The lone coach based car, #D-208, could be modeled in the same way as the regular coached, probably using the Roundhouse Overton 50' coach or of course scratch building.
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