n scale
model railroads of michigan
dt&i cabooses + gtw bonus
The pictures on this page show a couple of my custom DT&I cabooses. Disclaimer: I am not a DT&I purist and I had to use the numbers that were available on my last decal sheet - so I am fairly certain that the road numbers probably don't match the prototypes. My goal here was just to add a couple DT&I cabooses to my roster to complement my DT&I GP35s.
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I did do a little research to find photos of DT&I cabs in service as of the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s, and the blank-out window patterns and paint schemes reasonably seem to match what I found on-line. Decals were once again made by SoliDesign, and the scratch-built cupolas are explained in detail at my main "how-to" page where I show how I went about creating Wabash-style AA, DT&I, N&W, and M&LS cabooses.
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#112 is fresh out of the paint shop and posed on a spur track of my old AA layout, circa 2010 or 2011, with the image captured by an older digital camera using a bright flash.
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#107 is not so fresh out of the paint shop, as I applied some light weathering - and this image was captured in different lighting conditions on my recently-completed display layout.
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Believe it or not, these were both hand-painted with the same bottle of Floquil caboose red... but #107 had a dark gray primer and #112 used light gray. Just to show the difference that primer, paint, and photo lighting can make in how a model looks!
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And finally, as fate would have it, I stumbled into the discovery of a former DT&I caboose that went to and from the Ann Arbor... ending up back on the DT&I roster shortly before the DT&I was merged into the Grand Trunk Western. On the GTW, this caboose received a GT paint scheme, but it retained its DTI road number 122 and DTI sub-lettering.
I found a suitable decal set and used prototype pictures as a guide to add another unique caboose to my roster - which of course will now require the acquisition of GTW motive power for it to make any sense on or near my layout. But that's why model railroading is fun!