Bev-Bel Safety Cabin

Bev-Bel Safety Cabin Bev-Bel Safety Cabin
Bev-Bel is a company that paints undecorated Athearn kits in new paint jobs not offered by any other company. I received mine as a gift. It is a B&O safety cabin. Bev-Bel makes all of the B&O Safety Cabin paint jobs. Although not prototypically accurate, with a little work the Bev-Bel car can be a decent stand in. I would recommend starting with an undecorated model and doing the appropriate modifications, but if you get one as a gift don't strip it or throw it away, just modify it.

I plan on retiring this car once more accurate B&O cabooses become available. The WrightTrak C26 is a good start, but it is not exactly this class of caboose.

Below is a Dean Heacock pic of the real car I am modeling.

Dean Heacock photo
How to make a Bev-Bel Safety Cabin:
1. The first thing to keep in mind is to not ruin the white painted areas of this caboose. Take the roof walk and sand off the pegs on the underside. Fill in the holes on the roof where the pegs go. They are so bulky they detract from the appearance. We will just glue the roofwalk directly to the roof later.
2. Add an end piece on the roof to make the roof look thicker. This is easily accomplished by adding a small piece of plastic and sanding it to shape.
3. Fill in the exhaust stack hole. Drill one on the other side of the caboose even with the old hole. B&O cabins had the smoke stack on the other side than the Athearn model depicts. When it comes time to put the smoke stack on use a "T" shaped one from your parts box, don't use the straight pipe one that comes in the kit.
4. Paint the ends and roof grey. The ends will remain grey, the roof is being painted grey just to be a primer. Check your sanding work after the grey paint dries.
5. Paint the inside and metal weight on the base a uniform color. I use a tan color, but any will do. Also paint the window frames silver.
6. Tape off the roof, leave a small bit of the grey roof showing just above the white sides. Paint the roof (not the ends) rust color. Paint the roof walk too. I used flat dark brown by Tamiya for my base color.
7. Apply a black wash to the roof, end platforms, and roof walk. Also paint the bottom of the sides black. This will tend to hide the fact that the bottom sill doesn't look right.
8. When the wash is thouroughly dry, drybrush successively lighter shades of rust color, ending with light grey. Give the roof walk a final light drybrushing with silver.
9. Apply a small dot of red paint on the end cap you added. This will simulate the light.
10. Glue the roof walk on.
11. Apply the "C3003" number to the end cap of the roof.
12. Apply an overspray of dark grey overall, and a tan overspray on the bottom quarter.
13. Seal with clear flat.
14. Cut squares of clear plastic and put in for windows.
15. Assemble the shell to the frame and you are done.

Below are four "in work" pictures. The first shows the end piece I added to the roof nicely. The second pic shows how I have filled in the holes where the roofwalk should go. The next two pics show the roof weathered and waiting to weather the sides.

Below are the final pics of the C3003. Notice the end pic with the "C3003" letters added behind the ladder and the red dot to represent the light.