With time running out for comfortable use of my garage shop, I found I had an opening to work on a couple quick projects that have been sitting there for ages. One of those is this Zuhr observation car.

What happend was in various purchases I had all the parts for a Zuhr observation except for the round end.

[And, actually, bodies for 6 of them, 5 extra flat ends, and a lot of the aluminum rivets. I you need any of those, let me know.]

Then, one popped up for sale on eBay, a complete car, and I jumped on that opportunity. As what had me stalled on the car I had was that I needed a model to pattern my new end after.

Using that, I came up with this.

I had marked the windows out undersized, because you can’t add material later! I also found out, later, that I didn’t get the center window quite exactly centered, although it’s not obvious.

I settled on opening up 4 holes in each window and cutting them out the rest of the way with a Jeweler’s saw.

After that, it was just a lot of filing. Took a while. I used blue painter’s tape and also a steel straightedge to keep things straight.

Then things get interesting. First, I tried bending the brass, and it would not bend very well. Here is where I start using my experience working on building/repairing French horns. I annealed the material (heat to dull red with a torch, let it cool slowly) so that it was soft enough to bend. Then I worked on the main “U” bend and had to solder pieces (brass strips) inside to match the original Zhur end. The pieces are supports that allow the end to sit properly at the top and to key in place on top of the frame piece.

I managed to not take a photo of that part in progress, and I’ll leave out the part about having to work to make the flat end fit (holes did not line up). But I did catch a photo of this.

This was very satisfying work. One thing I did was cut a slot at the end so that I can have a rear coupler. What that then allowed also was some room to bend the parts to shape, using the two pieces of floor stock as a form to gently hammer the curve at the bottom.

Of course, Zuhr had some kind of fancy setup for stamping out the car parts in several steps from aluminum with steel dies. That process must have been very satisfying to watch!

And here is the final result. I hope to paint both of these cars soon, but I may have one more streamlined passenger car I want to ready for paint first.