Here we go again "Freight car of the week"?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Catt
  • Start date Start date
Wayne

I am not sure if any of the X-29 cars were in the boxcar red scheme. Here is my Red Caboose X-29 boxcar. As you can see I have not weathered it yet.

aaa.jpg


I know Red Caboose offered a boxcar red version with just the fried egg. No big billboard LNE.
 
Well, if it's prototypical, that'd be the one that would be most suitable for my '30s-era layout. Thanks, Tom, your B&W version looks good: do you know if the number series changed when they were repainted?

Wayne
 
Wayne

I am not sure. I know the black & white scheme was toward the end of the LNE and may have been the last boxcar scheme.

I will check around and let you know if I found out anything.
 
OK...I found a pic of the boxcar I did for Custom Bottle.
This is an Athearn Genesis kit.....and netted me $50.00 from the company!
 

Attachments

  • CBOC130502 Medium Web view.jpg
    CBOC130502 Medium Web view.jpg
    33.9 KB · Views: 71
Here's a modified version of Train miniature's version of the USRA doublesheathed boxcar. While their lower carbody style is correct for many of the early steel ARA cars, the USRA doublesheathed car was higher. Since this was before the introduction of the Accurail version of this car, I decided to modify three of the TM cars to more closely ressemble the cars that the TH&B received from the NYC in 1940. The original TM body for this car was the height of the wood siding in the photograph: the lower edge was smooth, like the sidesill below the siding in the photograph. Using an Xacto knife, I extended the grooves in the siding right down to the bottom edge of the car, then added the new sidesill shown, using strip styrene. Tichy doors were substituted for the originals, which were now too short, and new door tracks fabricated. I also built a new fishbelly underframe and added appropriate brake gear. The cars' original ends were removed and replaced with new Dreadnaught ends from Tichy. The cars got new built-up roofwalks of strip styrene, and all new metal steps and grabirons. The ladders were built-up using strip styrene for the stiles and wire grabs for the rungs. Paint and lettering, as usual, was from Floquil and C-D-S, repectively. I don't recall who manufactured the Andrews trucks.

100_5507.jpg


Wayne
 
Wayne, i am IMPRESSED!:thumb: until i started following this thread, i never realized all the work you put into so many of your cars, they look FANTASTIC!!!:thumb: NICE weathering too!:D -Deano
 
Thanks for the kind words, Dean. After using photographs to build models of a couple of prototype cars, I got interested in updating a lot of my older (and cheaper) cars. Now, whenever I buy a new freight car, it gets the needed upgrades before it makes it to the layout.

Wayne
 
Very impressive Wayne. I've tried in the past to extend the grooves in siding and never came close to the beautiful job you've done here. I can't tell a single difference in the width or depth! You are one talented modeler!
 
Thanks for the kind words, Gary. Here's another rebuilt car, this one from Proto1000, a 36' Fowler Patent Car. When these cars were first released, they were retailing for around $35.00, too rich for my tastes, especially since I "needed" lots of 'em. New England Rail Service was working on a kit of the same car, and the projected price was $24.00, so I opted to wait for that release. Well, that one's still tied up in litigation and that money tree in my backyard :rolleyes: still isn't coming through with a "cash crop", but fortunately for me, LifeLike came to the rescue. It seems that the initial run of these cars were lettered incorrectly, omitting most of the dimensional data. LifeLike sent out a number of new body shells for these cars, available as a no-cost trade for the incorrect bodies bought earlier. The LHS offered the old, traded-in bodies at $2.49 each. There were only six left the day that I happened to drop by, so I bought them all. Even though this was a car that I had waited years for someone to produce, (CNR and CPR owned thousands of these cars, a must for any Canadian modeller), the one thing, besides the price, that had deterred me from buying these cars was the plastic grabirons, which, in my opinion, are much too heavy. So, my first task was to remove them, fill in the resultant holes with styrene rod, drill new,smaller holes, then fabricate new wire grabs (these are an odd size, so commercial grabirons wouldn't fit. Thirty-six grabirons (per car) later, I was starting to believe remarks made by others about my sanity :D . However, undaunted, I also replaced each of the six plastic dropsteps (per car) with metal parts, along with the plastic handbrake staff. Referring to prototype drawings in the June 1985 issue of Mainline Modeler, I also realized that the models' roofwalks were short by 6" on either end. New ones were fabricated from strip styrene and scratchbuilt wire corner grabs were added on the new lateral roofwalks, eliminating the last of the oversize details. While I still hadn't spent much more than the original fifteen bucks for the body shells, I still had only body shells. (I had also removed the factory lettering, which seemed impervious to any of my time-tested methods, by carefully scraping the lettering with a chisel blade in an Xacto.)
Anyway, I splurged on six pairs of Proto Simplex trucks, correct for these cars, and fabricated a simple floor and underframe from sheet and strip styrene. Some K brake cylinders from Walthers 50' singlesheathed automobile cars (another bargain find), along with some scratchbuilt levers and brass wire rodding, and some Kadee couplers completed the construction. The cars were relettered with dry transfers from C-D-S: two TH&B, two CNR, and two CPR, one of them lettered for CP subsidiary Montreal & Atlantic, the car pictured below.

100_5497.jpg


Wayne
 
viperman, I LIKE YOUR COLLECTOR CAR!:thumb::D hey, did you decide to dull cote it to knock the shine off, or are you just going to leave it, since it's a collector car?
 
Here's another one, an oldie from about 30 years back. This is one of a dozen or so undecorated boxcars purchased through mail order. It was originally brush painted with Polly S paint, then lettered with Letraset dry transfers, in a much simpler lettering scheme. When I finally decided on a real lettering scheme, I drew up the artwork for custom dry transfers from C-D-S, and stripped the paint from those dozen cars. Six of the cars got the paint scheme shown, while the other six got the same paint scheme, but with a larger herald on a black background, similar to what is used on my reefers. The carbodies were unmodified. Meanwhile, I began working through my fleet of freight cars, upgrading details, or selling off cars and replacing them with more detailed versions. New cars purchased during this period were upgraded as they were built. (The only cars that haven't been done, and may never be, are hoppers, as there are just too many of them, and too many grabirons to replace.) Finally, I decided that these boxcars, plus a fair number of Athearn 50' automobile cars, needed to be spruced up. All of the cast corner steps and grabirons were shaved off and replaced with metal parts. The roofwalks were shaved with an autobody file to reduce their thickness, and new corner grabs fabricated for the roofwalk laterals. The door tracks were replaced with ones more to scale, rendering the stock doors too short. On the 40' cars, spare doors from Front Range and McKean boxcars were used, while the 50' cars got reworked Athearn doors. I tried to match the paint as best I could, although I seldom use colours straight from the bottle, and there was some variation between cars. The cars had been weathered fairly heavily when originally built, so I tried to keep any additional weathering mainly on the new parts, attempting to blend the new with the old. Brake gear is unmodified, as yet.:D

100_5404.jpg


The part car visible to the right is a Walthers 50' single sheathed automobile boxcar, purchased as part of a sizeable batch of undecs that the LHS was clearing out. The unseen end has the same herald as the 40'er, but no slogan. These cars got the usual upgrades as they were built, including conversion to AB brakes. (these are the cars that provided the K brakes for those Fowler rebuilds, shown in my previous post)

Wayne
 
This is an Accurail car that got a quick and easy upgrade before being put into service. The prototypes of this car were built, for the most part, by National Steel Car, in Hamilton, Ont., and have a different style end than the Accurail cars. While aftermarket parts are available for many of the variety of ends used, I opted to leave the ends as-is. I did remove the grabirons and cast steps, replacing them with metal parts, and installed a fairly complete UC brake system. The high-speed express trucks are from Athearn, the paint is SMP Accupaint, and the lettering is dry transfers from C-D-S.

100_5611_934487.jpg


The CNR also had express boxcars that were ex-freight service cars, and retained their AB brakes and Bettendorf-style freight trucks.

Wayne
 
Once again Wayne, your work blows me away! Nice to see I'm not the only one who likes the shorter (length) cars.

As for the car I posted, I think I will leave it, since I've come to realize its a collector car. When I bought it, I had no idea it was, I just liked it. I have added weight to the the car, 1/2 oz directly over each truck, and it does roll very smooth. I also replaced the generic knuckle couplers it came with, with actual kadee #5s. Not sure if I'll run it that much, so I think I will leave it as is.
 
viperman said:
Once again Wayne, your work blows me away! Nice to see I'm not the only one who likes the shorter (length) cars.

As for the car I posted, I think I will leave it, since I've come to realize its a collector car. When I bought it, I had no idea it was, I just liked it. I have added weight to the the car, 1/2 oz directly over each truck, and it does roll very smooth. I also replaced the generic knuckle couplers it came with, with actual kadee #5s. Not sure if I'll run it that much, so I think I will leave it as is.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment, viperman. Your reason for buying that car is the best one, in my mind, for buying or creating any piece of rolling stock. It's the reason behind every car I buy, or repaint and reletter, or build from scratch. The only problem is that it makes it very difficult to part with any car, as it was when I backdated the layout to the '30s. As it is, I'm still in possession of quite a few cars (and locos) more suited to the '50s. They sometimes show up in my photos, time travellers from another era, in the Twilight Zone of model railroading.

Wayne
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom