Shifted Lumber Load and Journal Repacking

 If you have ever wondered how a shifted lumber load is re-adjusted, it's not done board-by-board. Watch this video to see the cool way that it's fixed. The video also has a short clip showing a journal being repacked, along with some pretty godawful humor. The whole clip takes less than a minute. You can buy a high res version by clicking here.

Scratchbuilding Single Sheathed Car Sides presentation file and video

 

As promised, please follow this link to view my presentation file for Scratchbuilding Single Sheathed Car Sides from Hindsight 20/20 3.0.

You can also watch the presentation here. (new youtube link added after original post was published)

Join the Hindsight 20/20 discussions at the Hindsight 20/20 groups.io forum.

Enjoy!

CStPM&O 40' Fowler Box Car

This is another throwback Thursday car I am revisiting from my "Essential Freight Cars" days of the 2000s. The subject car shown above is a Westerfield kit. I have always been drawn to this prototype because of its character. A single sheathed car with a board roof that soldiered on into the early 50s is a gem by nature. I like it so much that I bought another kit and plan to scratchbuild sides, ends, and a roof with board-by-board construction and mate them to the kit underframe. Effectively weathered, I am certain it will be a head turner. It didn't hurt that I stumbled across the photo of one in Ashland, Oregon circa the very late 1940s, shown at bottom. The details about the model shown above can be found in the Railroad Model Craftsman article about the forty-foot box cars built under the Fowler patent.

The car shown above was photographed under the auspices of the FSA-OWI and, fortunately for us, was recorded with large format color transparency film.

This photo is another FSA-OWI collection image. It highlights the character inherent in the wood board roof. Combined with the fancy '400' slogan, it makes for a winning combination.

Tucked behind the SP Baldwin AS-616 in this image at Ashland, Oregon was one of the subject cars, heavily weathered circa the late 1940s.

The Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha rostered 1,500 of these forty-foot cars built under the Fowler Patent. There were 1,500 cars, built in 1915, in the series 31200-34198, even numbers. By late 1951, there were only 190 in service. These cars, along with the sister CNW cars, can be replicated using the Westerfield 4400-series kits

Western Refrigerator Line AC&F Reefer

In the spirit of throwback Thursdays, I am going to start digging into my past and sharing some of the cars I've built over the years. This model is a Western Refrigerator Line (Green Bay & Western) AC&F reefer. Branchline Trains offered them as decorated kits way back in the day. To one of the BLT cars, I added some detail upgrades, including wire grab irons and uncoupling devices, A-Line metal sill steps, wire upgrades for the brake gear, a Klasing power hand brake (with vertical shaft) from a Proto 2000 Mather box car kit, and 0.005" styrene strips at the lower door edges, below the hinges. I tried my best to match the gray, freight car red, and black to blend the detail upgrades.

Note the Proto 2000 Klasing hand brake

These cars were profiled in "Essential Freight Cars," so if you have the back issues of Railroad Model Craftsman, you can find the article there. If I were to model these cars today, I would use Tahoe or Rapido (from the NP double sheathed box cars) trucks, instead of the Accurail trucks shown above. Another vehicle to model these in HO scale is Westerfield.

Fayetteville, NC, Oct. 22, 1951, Col. Chet McCoid photo, Bob's Photo

WRL had 500 such cars delivered by American Car & Foundry in 1929 (lot 920,) car nos. 9000-9499. They were fairly long-lived, lasting well into the 1950s, with some surviving into the 60s. An indeterminate number of cars received side sill strengthening members that made the cars quite distinctive in appearance.