One vintage American OO model you rarely see is the Graceline caboose. I have two that were built up really well, but they were not built up in the standard manner. But then an example with no cupola appeared on eBay and appealed to me, as I knew I had the comprestic (cardboard) parts to make a cupola for it. I could at least fix it, and if it turned out well maybe it would become a car for one of my roads.

The car arrives, and I finally get started a few days ago. One thing I learned was that if you cut out the parts exactly as laid out by Graceline the two ends of the cupola are slightly different, and they don’t match the pitch of the roof! Maybe a part of why this car was not made for long….

Having dealt with those issues, I still needed a roof, and then also the cupola to be nice and square and solid.

Exhibit “A” is the one of my original examples on the left in the photo, that builder was good! Somehow he glued it all together really clean and solid with windows and handrails on the top.

What I wanted was some sort of inner frame to support the sides and roof,  and then an idea occurred. What if I took a Tyco HO cupola (the type on their big modern caboose that is essentially OO scale) and cut out everything that would be visible behind the Graceline parts, and use the roof too

The cut up cupola is seen in the first photo and this second photo shows the cupola with the Graceline parts sitting with the frame/roof.

Where this is a great thing as I could easily substitute scribed plastic siding material for the vintage sides and use this to form a cupola on other models.

I have other caboose projects stalled, in particular a Hawk caboose that someone started and abandoned. I’ve never seen one of those built up. My thinking was to upgrade the siding with plastic material, and with the cupola idea there to help with that critical part I might get to this model sometime soon.