A Caboose Kitbash

I've been down for a couple of weeks due to significant spinal pain so I've been taking things slow and easy.  While I've been mostly sedentary, I've been working on a caboose kitbash I've had planned for a few years.  

Unfortunately, I never thought about capturing a photo of my caboose before I started cutting away parts of the caboose so the photo below is someone else's photo of the same exact caboose.  

This caboose is what is known as a bobber caboose and these cabooses have the distinct characteristics of being very short in length and having only two fixed axles.  The first thing I wanted to change was this fixed two axle configuration.  This caboose never rolled well and it sometimes would derail on our small garden railroad.  I wanted to remove this whole undercarriage and install two typical railroad trucks with two axles each under this little caboose.

In these photos, below, you can see that I now have two trucks under the caboose.  Each truck has two axles and four wheels.  These trucks roll much more smoothly than the original configuration.  Plus, the fact that these new trucks rotate/pivot on curved track makes the caboose less susceptible to derailing.

In this first photo, below, you can more easily see the difference between the fixed two axles in the above photo and the two trucks in this photo below.  I also added that toolbox in between the trucks.  This photo was captured after I applied only the red-oxide primer to the caboose.  

I am still using most of the original undercarriage but I did have to cut away, grind away, file away and sand away a lot of it.  I added two hefty bolsters to mount the new trucks to.  I added a couple of toolboxes in the middle of the undercarriage on each side.  I also had to cut away part of the steps to make room for the trucks to pivot left and right on curved track.  

I roughed up the vertical boards on the outside of the caboose to make it appear more of an older caboose.  I also sprayed four different colors in different areas on this caboose just as a primer base.  I plan to do some significant brushwork painting as well as some light weathering with powders.  

As you can see in the photos, this caboose never had any window panes which looks a bit weird to me.  The windows are glassless and this is another thing that has always bothered me so I plan to add panes to these windows.

I'm going to add some rear marker light lanterns to the rear end of this caboose.  I plan to add one or two lights on the interior too.  Since I'm adding lights, I needed to do some electrical work in the form of adding a battery holder for rechargeable batteries, making room for an accessible switch on the undercarriage to turn the lights on or off, and running all the necessary wiring inside the caboose.  

I thought about adding more details to the interior but I decided not to do that on this caboose.  The added detail would be very difficult to see anyway.  

That being said, I do plan to add some detail parts to the exterior.  Ideally, I should have added these detail parts before doing any painting but, honestly, I forgot.  I was in a hurry to prime the caboose!

So, this little side project is coming along and I'm excited to see how this turns out in the end.  It should be a nice little caboose!