Penn Central N5k Caboose

The Build

First, I cut some thin styrene to be boarded up the windows.  I tried to be very careful and only glue from the inside so as not to mess up the outside.  I then removed the two roof walks, and cut off the smoke stack.  When I cut the stack, I learned that the plastic was black, and the model was painted red.  I had incorrectly assumed since the inside was all red, then the plastic was red.  

So now I needed to remove the paint.  To remove the paint, I covered the body with the paper towel soaked with rubbing alcohol.  This got off most of the paint, and then just a little q-tip and brush work to remove the stubborn parts.  

Once I had the paint removed, I cut off the copula using a razor saw.  I cut it down to size using the tops of the side windows as a guide.  This left only the front facing windows in the cupola.    Once I glued the cut-down cupola back in place, I boarded up the remaining windows using the same thin styrene.  

The roof had these ridges where the walkways had been.  I cut these off with a sharp razor.  I filled the holes left by the walkway posts and smoke stack with modelling putty and  sanded things smooth.  I did my best to not sand off the rivets and other details along the roof. 

I noticed in the pictures that the ladders to the roof  had been removed, but there are these 'support poles' up to the roof.  The original model does not have these support poles, but does have a ladder going to the roof.  So cut the ladder down to just 1 pole to represent the support.   I might add another support in the future.