Assembling The Taylor Horse Car Kit

The George Taylor Horse Car Kit is a quality kit that builds into a very unique railway car that would promote interesting railway operations and would definitely be a conversation piece.

I largely followed the detailed instructions when building my model though I did uncover some discrepancies and choose to deviate from the written word in a few places. The following is a summary of my construction details which are meant to augment the kit instructions.

Step 1 – Building The Body Core – Modification

The first step in building the model is to assemble the sub frame or body core. Here I followed the instructions faithfully and ended up with this nice frame.

The “body core” with roof, floor & two risers glued together.

A problem arose when I test fitted the pre-painted wall panel on the side – the wall was too short, or the body core was too tall. See next photo.

When the kit is built as per the instructions, the “core” ends up being taller than the pre-painted siding, thus the stringers are left exposed below the siding which is non prototypical. The solution was to remove the floor panel, cut it shorter and install it between the end risers. This will reduce the care height by about 3/16″.

Picture of the revised floor assembly.

Once the floor was rebuilt, it was time to complete the under floor details. 0.090″ thick 8″ scribed siding (Mt. Albert P/N: MA722P12) is glued to the underside of the floor panel. The wood stringers supplied in the kit are then glued to the scribed flooring.

Dividers are used to transfer dimensions from the schematic to the model. Ensure the stringers are installed in the right place and parallel to the sides of the car.

Clamps are used to hold the stringers in place until the glue sets.