Shining Up A Junk Lima Caboose

Recently on the Tyco Depot Forum we had a virtual train sale.  One of the many items I picked up most of a Lima CN Bay Window Caboose.  Originally it would have looked like this...

... but for a buck I got one with janky trucks, and lacking roof walk, railings and ladders. I failed to photograph it in it's original condition, but you get the idea.  Lima had some good models in their day, but much of what they produced are basic toy-level models like this.

My son likes CN and we have a couple locos and a small grain hopper consist. So, even though they never rostered this style of caboose, I got to work on it.  First, I filled in the holes on the roof from the walk and painted the roof black.

Railing and brake wheel sections came from another junk caboose.  Oddly, on the original model there was no chimney so I drilled a hole and added one.

I painted on stripes, railings and steps and roughly based on this caboose.

Photograph by Art Grieve of Winnipeg Manitoba.  From https://yourrailwaypictures.com/Cabooses/

In my opinion adding glazing -in this case windows from clear food packaging- is one of the best things you can do to improve the look of cheap cabooses.

I smoothed out the rotation of the trucks, but at some point it will get new trucks and body mounted couplers.  The only detail I wish I'd added would have been to paint the window frames aluminum before glazing, but it looks fine as-is.

No one will be confusing this with an expensive modern model, but it's a pretty good example of what can be done to a cheap toy train car -even without proper detail pieces- with just a bit of paint and plastic.

-Karl