Doings in Billings | 8 Comments - Click Here :

    Lincoln Pinn - After seeing what brother Derrell is doing with his Sn3 “Type II” C&S coal cars, I thought I would share with the group what my friend Bob Stears is doing up in Billings, Montana.

    Billings is a hot bed of HO Northern Pacific mania. Bob is alone up there championing the Colorado narrow gauge cause. I stopped by Bob’s place while on my way home from a long road trip this past fall and spent an afternoon with Bob in his “shop”. I put the word “shop” in quotations since it is really one bay of his garage with work benches lining one wall and the rest of the space packed full of models in display cases, tools, styrene, detail parts, model building supplies, his rather pathetic On3 “shelf layout” and anything his wife wants “out of the way”.

     Anyway, Bob has been producing an On3 a fleet of high quality single piece resin castings of all the C&S cinder cars and coal car types (except “type III” which he gets from Grandt Line). Bob has scratch built all the masters for these various On3 C&S coal cars and cinder cars in styrene and had them professionally cast in super high quality resin under the watchful eye of master resin caster Doug Junda. The result are single piece “body castings” of these cars which are really nice. The bolsters, coupler pockets and under-body detail included in each casting so all Bob needs to do is hang the brake gear, put on some grab irons, paint and decal the cars. So far, Bob has dozens of these C&S coal cars and cinder cars moving through his cluttered and disordered shop. Most of the cars carry C&S block lettering livery using  the decal sets Bob and his friends Bill Meredith and Doug Junda jointly produced for “The Cimarron Works Decals, Inc.”. When it is all said and done, Bob will have several dozen On3 “type I” and “type II” On3 C&S coal cars ready for use – all with full underside brake detail and nice weathering.  Bob has already built up a baker’s dozen of the Grandt line On3 “type III” C&S coal cars. All run on San Juan trucks with metal PSC wheels. A couple of Bob’s On3 coal car castings escaped from Bob’s “shop” and were sold by “The Cimarron Works”, but I understand these are long gone.

     Something that really caught my eye were Bob’s On3 C&S side dump cars converted from “type II” coal cars. Bob had one of these C&S side dump cars at the 2014 Kansas City NNGC contest and apparently no one really caught on to how cool it was. But, I sure did! Holy smokes! I couldn't believe that someone had actually built a model of one of these super cool narrow gauge side dump cars. The C&S had ten of these side dump cars numbered 0200 -0209.  Of course Bob has had at least ten of these On3 “type II” side dump cars cast up and now under construction. If the C&S had ten of these side dump cars, then Bob has to have ten On3 versions as well. No sense arguing with him about it. It’s just how he is. While the C&S apparently had built many more of these side dump cars,  the majority of these “type II” narrow gauge side dump cars were leased to the CB&Q Black Hills operation. Some of these “type II” side dump cars apparently survived to the end of C&S narrow Gauge operations. Attached are photographs of one of Bob’s side dump On3 cars along with several uni-body resin castings.

    Using this casting process, Bob is amassing quite a fleet of C&S coal cars – probably close to forty On3 C&S coal cars in block lettering livery when it is all said and done. Bob assures me that next up for his mass production mania are C&S “type I” and “Type III” boxcars – most in block lettering with a few of the “type I” boxcars in “C&S Roman” lettering.

    When I asked Bob why he has been cranking out such a fleet of On3 C&S coal and cinder cars, and moving quickly to build a fleet of On3 C&S boxcars, all I got back from Bob was a blank, slacked jawed stare. Ultimately, after shuffling his feet and staring at the floor, Bob mumbled something about building a real layout based on Leadville mining and mill operations. No trees mind you, just settling ponds and tailing piles interposed between the smelters and mills. Hence all  the coal and cinder cars! Now I understand! When I inquired about the fleet of boxcars Bob is working on, he looked me square in the eye and said “ice”.

Anyway, I will post more of Bob’s efforts in the coming weeks, if the mood strikes.

Lincoln Pinn