Most N scale bovines offered by figure manufacturers are milk cows, but the Montana cattle industry requires steers and bulls, too. Dan Lewis uses wire and Microscale Kristal Kleer to turn cows into bulls, as well as to model longhorns, on his N scale Milwaukee Road North Montana Line.
One problem I encountered with commercially produced cattle in N scale is that they are all milk cows. Such cows are fine, of course, if one is modeling a dairy farm in Wisconsin, but the Montana cattle industry needs steers and bulls. Using a motor tool with a burr bit, I carefully remove the udders from these milk-producers. I drill a short hole in the bottom center of their bellies in which to glue small lengths of brass wire. The area around the wire I build up with Microscale Kristal Kleer, a product usually used for glazing model windows, and this simulates the rerouted water works for my surgically altered bulls and steers. After painting, they now look like male bovines instead of milk-producers.
To model longhorns, I snip off the smaller molded horns with a sprue cutter. Next I use a needle to start drilling holes in the heads, then drill holes with a no. 80 bit. Into these holes I glue brass wires, shaping them to simulate long horns. Again using Microscale Kristal Kleer, I add bulk to the base of the horns before painting. For color references to longhorns as well as to Hereford cattle, you can Google both and find a multitude of good color photos on the Internet.
Don’t know about Montana or the particular era modeled but two things stand out.Ken Harstine
Excellent article! Being a cattle guy, I was originally wondering if you were going to model the bulls with and the steers without! Kinda hard to see that in Nscale! 🙂 Nice conversion of cow models to bulls & steers!