The only piece of rolling stock that I don't have is a caboose. Because of 1:1 projects and on-going pain problems with my spinal arthritis, this project has been on-and-off for quite awhile. I've started back at it and here's some slow-but-gittin'-there progress pics of my caboose rough-out so far. It's made up of the usual steel angle bracing and uprights with a steel frame and horizontal wooden sides. It scales out to about 32' over the end sills...just right for a narrow gauge hack. I noticed that the angle brace located to the right of the door needs to be reversed (sigh). All exterior sections need to be finished square and tight with no gaps, glue smears, or anything else that will show up under a paint job, hence the green filler putty. I'll give them all a coat of primer when ready to see what shows up and will need to be taken care of.



In this view is one of the end doors. The other end platform is built and waiting installation. The HO steps are ones that I had in the parts box and they look proportional, me thinks.



Here's the under-frame. It's almost completed with an air brake cylinder, piping, and brake rods. It temporarily sits on PBL freight trucks that I'll swap out for caboose or passenger trucks.



Next up will be to make up a pair of small slide-opening windows and install the sliding door. After that, I'll build the opposite exterior wall. I struggled with figuring out the bracing configuration and that ate up a lot of time. That should go faster now that I know what I'm doing and where I want this to go! Eventually it will have a removable roof for viewing the detailed interior. It'll also have plenty of the rivets that go along with this type of construction, too. This is going to take a good bit of time to complete, but I'll post pics as I go along. Comments and suggestions are always welcome!