Good times, great oldies... Forty-foot Postwar AAR Box Cars

 

This Georgia car is a decorated Branchline kit, save for a Southwest Scale Improved Youngstown doors with 6-6-5 (top to bottom) arrangement of corrugations and matching paint on the door and Ksto ASF A-3 trucks

Way back in the early times of Speedwitch over 20 years ago, I had offered several sets of parts to replicate the various details and nuances of forty-foot Postwar AAR box cars, using the fine Branchline kits as fodder. They were a fun way to model the distinctive details of these cars. Anyway, I stumbled across a tote of parts in the barn yesterday and it had various bits for the Santa Fe's Bx-44 cars, with their distinctive interim Improved Youngstown doors. That also got me thinking about the cars in general. What a fun ride they were. Here are some pics of those cars with notes about some of the details.

The Santa Fe's 500 Bx-44 box cars were distinct for their interim Improved Youngstown doors, with wide panel overlaps. The cars also had Pullman-Standard "notched" tabs below the side sill and a flattened area on the end corrugation where the hand brake housing was mounted.

The Wabash continued their use of full-length side sill support sections that spanned the bolsters, as also added to earlier Modified 1937 AAR box cars. They also used pressure head cylinders with integral lever brackets, Superior seven panel doors, and Wine style ladders, among other specialties.

The Southern and subsidiaries purchased postwar AAR box cars with eight-foot door openings with either Superior seven-panel doors (shown) or Improved Youngstown doors with the 6-6-5 corrugation arrangement as well as Pullman-Standard "notched" tabs below the side sill. PS - the washout on the Southern medallion is what happens when you accidentally use solvent cement as a decal softener!

The Pittsburgh & West Virginia cars had Improved Dreadnaught ends with an "abbreviated" (shortened) top main rib and prewar-style Youngstown doors plus Wine-style ladders. The repainted version above was modeled by the late Paul Lyons and the model below shows an as-built car

The Erie purchased 1,200 cars that also had an abbreviated top rib on the ends and prewar-style Youngstown doors, plus Universal Rotary Type brake adjusters and a variety of hand brakes, trucks and running boards

The Louisville & Nashville has distinctive cars with three door styles (prewar Youngstown, 6-6-5 Improved Youngstown and seven-panel Superior) and ends without any lower corner additions below the end sills

These were a lot of fun to create and are highly illustrative of how different "standard" cars can be

Kadee Lake Superior & Ishpeming PS-1 Box Car Completed

I recently completed my model of a LS&I PS-1 that I started a couple years back. The prototype info can be found via this link and the original modeling info can be accessed via this link. This post highlights the finishing of that model, most notably the painting and weathering. The task was to blend the "bare" areas of the doors, lower doors tracks, and other details in with the decorated portions of the model and to also create the sharp transition between oxide and black at the corners that was rather sloppy on the model as it came from Kadee.

For the oxide color, I experimented with an acrylic ink product that I anticipate using again in the future, as it airbrushed beautifully. It comes in a rainbow of colors and is incredibly convenient for me since I can buy it at my local Blick's, about three blocks away in Brooklyn (Blick's also carriers my preferred super glue, airbrushes, PanPastels, and kabuki masking tape, making it a go-to stop for many of my hobby needs!) The inks are called abstract acrylic ink by Sennelier. The color I used was 645 - Chinese Orange. The color is not a 100% match, but I was able to get it closer by using some Pan Pastels to lighten it enough to be passable. I sealed everything with a coat of Future and added a few chalk marks. These were sealed with a flat coat.

For the weathering I used Bragdon's grimy grey powder. I applied it in vertical streaks to simulate light streaking. I sealed that with a flat coat and then applied another coat of Future. I added several more chalk marks. I also masked around the existing repack stencil and applied a thin coat of oxide red for a newer repack. I added the new repack stencils from a set of New York Central decals. I sealed everything with a final flat coat.

A couple other notes of mention: I used Kadee's ASF A-3 trucks, but replaced the wheelsets with Kadee ribbed back 0.088" tread width wheelsets. I also used Kadee screw mounted draft gear ("coupler boxes") in place of the kit's original boxes. A keen observer will also note that I need to add the angle cock/air hose parts (from Hi-Tech) to the brackets to actually complete the model!

Now I have another mostly ready-to-run Kadee PS-1 for the fleet. I plan to replicate this model exactly, but letter it for New York Central (if you read the prior posts on the LS&I prototypes, you will find that the LS&I cars were piggybacked on a NYC order.) I will blog about that model when I get around to building it.

Kadee Santa Fe Class Bx-57 40' PS-1 Box Car

When Kadee released this model of the Santa Fe Bx-57, I eagerly ordered one, thinking I could easily add a ready-to-run (RTR) car to the fleet. It’s rare that I find a model that meets my standards and is RTR, so I was thrilled to have it. I was recently in the process of finishing a few models and decided it was a good time to add a little weathering to this model so that it would be “complete”. Easy, or so I thought...

I did have a question about the trucks. I was curious if the trucks were black or mineral red. I consulted with Ed Hawkins and while he did not have specific information about this group of cars, he opined that if they followed Santa Fe practices of the period ordered from AC&F, then the trucks should be mineral red. So, I sandblasted the sideframes and wheelsets and while I was doing that, I also blasted the ladders, grabs, running boards, brake steps, hand brake and housing, underframe components, and other engineering plastic parts to aid in the adhesion of a flat coat to be applied prior to weathering the model. On the sides and ends, I masked the areas adjacent to the ones to be blasted to prevent lettering from being removed erroneously. The photo above shows the side after the ladders and bracket grabs were blasted. The transition from the unblasted area to the blasted area is clearly discernible near the ladder, due to more advantageous lighting at that part of the car.

Kadee and Southwest Scale Productions Improved Youngstown doors shown side-by-side for comparison

I referred to my copy of John Dobyne’s Santa Fe Boxcars 1869-1953 (currently out of print) to make sure the locations of the placard and route card boards on the model’s doors matched the prototype. Not only did they not match, but the doors on the model did not match the prototype -- see photo above. The Bx-57 used the “upside-down” version of the Improved Youngstown door, not the version on the model. Fortunately, there is a version of the door available in HO that is every bit as finely rendered as the details on the Kadee PS-1, making it a perfect complement. The door I am referring to is available from Southwest Scale as part number FC-622. The door is slightly shorter than the Kadee part, but the prototype’s door roller track is actually taller than the version on the model, so all is not lost.

New door and roller track plus placard and route card boards installed, masked, and ready to be painted to match the car body.

I removed the doors from the Kadee model. I also carefully removed the lower door tracks. I applied a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1200 and once that had dried, I carefully wet sanded the area with 400 followed by 600-grit sandpapers to clean up any telltale traces of the door guides or my poor removal of the guides. I glued the Southwest Scale doors to the Kadee model, using sparing amounts of MEK.

The door roller tracks were fashioned in a few steps. First, I added mounting “brackets” for the tracks. These were created by adding bits of 2x2 to a 0.005" styrene strip that was 2 scale inches wide. For simplicity, I created a long strip of 2 scale scale inch wide 0.005" strip and added the 2x2 bits to the strip. I removed the brackets one at a time as needed, adding 7 for each door. I added the four under the door opening first, followed by adding the 1x3 guide. I added the 3 outer brackets last, sliding them under the 1x3 guide, all the while making sure that the guide remained straight.

The placement of these brackets along the side sills corresponds to the location of rivets on the faces of the door roller tracks as shown in the photos of these cars in Dobyne’s book. The door roller track is a strip of HO scale 1x3 styrene glued to the brackets. I completed these tracks by adding rivets in the appropriate locations.

One last detail for the doors was the placard and route card styrene boards. These were scratchbuilt. The basic placard board was constructed from 1x3, 1x6, 1x6, and 1x3, glued edge-to-edge to create a 18" height, all glued to a 0.005" backing. I trimmed these to a length of 27". I then added the frame/mounting brackets using 2" wide strips of 0.005". The route card boards were created from single pieces of 1x6 12 scale inches in length, glued to a 0.005" backing. The frame/mounting brackets were again created from 2" wide strips of 0.005" styrene.

I had also wanted to add a piece of small chain between the brake cylinder and lever to capture that nice look of a dangling chain when viewed from the side. I was not aware of how easy it is to remove the center sills, crossbearers, and crossties in one part, with little effect on the overall underframe detail. So, I decided to upgrade all the AB brake details, as I was going to paint the underbody and details (as well as the doors and tracks) mineral red. I removed the Kadee brake details and added the aftermarket parts and wire, as shown.

An additional "construction" detail that will be covered in the next and final installment on this car is the replacement of the running boards. The model came with an Apex Tri-Lok running board. Kadee has since released a U.S. Gypsum Expanded Metal running board that is accurate for the Bx-57. I will also provide details about my paint matching efforts, as I feel that the color I used is extremely close to the factory model, and will be virtually indistinguishable with a small amount of weathering.