Pennsy's Freight Cars

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone

Enjoy this latest helping of freight cars that I recently built.

Here are two recent boxcar projects I completed.  Both are Pennsylvania X43b PS-1 boxcars.  I realized I had only two Pennsylvania freight cars on my layout.  Since I am modeling the Northern Wisconsin area and Upper Peninsula of Michigan I realized there were a number of Pennsylvania freight cars that came across the Straits of Mackinaw on the ferries to the UP (Upper Peninsula). 

First we have a model of a 1960 rebuild  of an X43b with the shadow keystone emblem and the larger Pennsylvania lettering.  This was a Reynolds boxcar kit that had the wrong lettering and markings for another Pennsylvania car.  I stripped the car and repainted it with this scheme  along with adding additional details such as cut levers, air hoses, and brake system details.  I used Selley Custom Finishes, Cal-Scale, Plastruct, and Keil-Line parts to achieve the details desired. 

The second car in a Pennsylvania X43b in the as delivered paint scheme.  These cars were first introduced to the PRR in 1950 through mid-1951.  This was another rescued Athearn boxcar found at a local train show for a couple of bucks.  Again it received the "Thayer" treatment of stripping to the bare metal and restoring the paint job.  I used Scalecoat paint and Champion Decals for the detailing and lettering.  The other details on the car were added using Selley Custom Finishes, Cal-Scale, Plastruct, and Keil--Line parts.

Milwaukee Road Units and Green Bay Western

After looking at all the post of Freight cars and a few passengers cars I have done I decided that it was time to show off one of my Engines.

This locomotive is a model of one of the Milwaukee Road H16-66 units they operated in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the ore lines operated with the C&NW to Escanaba Michigan.   The basic model was an early William engine with a bad motor.  Then I found another early Williams engine with the early plastic truck sideframes and plastic pilots.  Bothe of the motors in the second unit were in good shape.  One Williams locomotive had a Virginian shell in great shape.  The other shell had been painted in a paint scheme of unknown identity with no number or roadname.  I stripped the shell after rebuilding the motors and mounting new die-cast sideframes and pilots to the frame.  Once I had the shell down to the basic plastic I primered the shell and then selected the bright orange paint that would have been found on a Milwaukee Road locomotive that had just returned from the shops with a new paint job and renumbered in the new 3 digit number system vice the older 4-digit numbers.  I added details to the engine and painted the handrails as the engine would have been given with the new coat of paint.  I did not add the "X" marks on the frame as these units did not get that done to them initially until the following year, when the "X" marking were added to most Milwaukee Road hood diesels for grade crossing safety.  This engine will be used on the 3 rail layout as a trailing unit to handle longer trains of ore cars or general freight. 

This is  model of the Green Bay & Western's larger 8000  class boxcars which were delivered in 1930 to increase the GB&W's ability to haul paper products out of Green Bay and Wisconsin Rapids.  These cars were copies of similar boxcars delivered to the Milwaukee Road in the same year.  GB&W's subsidiary Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western also received similar cars in the 5100 series at the same time.  These cars were used for transporting larger shipments of paper and forest products outside of Wisconsin.  This car was built using photographs and drawings of these cars I found online.  I used Northeastern scribed wood for the sides as well as Selley Custom Finishes, Cal-Scale, Walthers, Keil-Line, All-Nation, and Scale City Design parts.  The paint is Scalecoat Boxcar Red and the decals are Champion decals.  The trucks are Athearn die-cast sprung trucks and the underframe detail is made from K&S brass wire.  The catwalk was made using wire window screen material to duplicate the modern catwalks added to these cars.  I enjoy building these outside braced boxcars and they were found in the Wisconsin and Upper Michigan areas up to the late 1960's and early 1970's on both the Green Bay and Western as well as the Milwaukee Road.  This care will operate on my 3-rail layout.

Soo Line Coach

Okay, this is what a few months of late night builds and Aerosmith was able to create.

Another one of my favorite railroads is the Soo Line.  While going through some old broken passenger cars looking for a part, I found another badly abused Walthers short coach kit.  It had been built many years ago by another modeler and I came across it and several other short Walthers passenger cars in a box.  All total there were 25 passenger cars in the box. Since that purchase, many I have built and sold and some I have kept building them for the C&NW portion of my layout.  C&NW had several of these short passenger cars having them built by ACF in Jeffersonville, Indiana at there large plant there in 1910 through 1912.  I did a little research and found out that the Soo Line owned some of these short ACF coaches purchased in the early 1900's.  After my research I found the numbers and the paint scheme for these cars.  I decided then that a Soo Line car was a great idea and here is the final product.  I stripped the car back to the bare metal and wood, replacing some of the broken parts with new.  There was no interior detail other than the seats, which also had to be stripped of old paint and then repainted.  I added the lavatory and the furnace unit along with a tile floor and baggage racks in the roof portion.  Most of the detail parts came from Selley Custom Finishes, Plastruct, Walthers, Cal-Scale, and Keil Line.  The passengers are Woodland Scenic with some from Bachmann.  I found some brake system blueprints from ACF that I used for the brake system under this car along with photographs of these cars that have been preserved.  This gave me enough information to complete the underframe detail that is pictured here. It took the better part of 4 months to build this car and detail the underframe and the interior, but when done it turned out rather nice.  Hope you like it too

More tales from the Workbench

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Well I have been working almost non-stop on all of my freight cars and models for the last few months. In fact I have been working on them so much that I am actually starting to get a tan from the Fluorescent Lights over my workbench. Well here are some of the more recent models I have built under those lights to the sound of Buffalo Springfield and Kansas.

This Monon boxcar is another one of my favorite projects. I found this boxcar during a local train show and again it was another badly abused Athearn boxcar that underwent the "Thayer" treatment! Again I stripped it down to the bare metal and cleaned up the car.  I then added the missing detail parts that were needed to make the car a model of one of the early Monon rebuilds from 1960.  I found a nice photograph on George Elwood's Fallen Flags website showing an Erie AS-616 switching and behind the locomotive was this same boxcar.  The car has Plastruct pieces, Selley Custom Finishes, Cal-Scale parts, and is painted with Scalecoat paint.  Finally I decaled it with Microscale Decals.  When I was a teenager, my family moved from Wisconsin to Kentucky and for a time we lived in Southern Indiana along the Monon mainline in Campbellsburg, Indiana.  Since I model the years 1959-1960, I felt this would be a great car for my layout.

This is a Fort Dodge, Des Moines, and Southern rebuild boxcar that I made a few years ago.  It is a combination of train parts I had in my shop, so I decided to build the car using photographs of similar cars.  I used various parts from Plastruct, Cal-Scale, Keil-Line, Athearn, All-Nation, and Walthers trucks and ends.  The decals are Champion Decals and the paint is Floquil Oxide Red.  This car will be operated on my Hi-Rail layout.

Well that's about it, most of these cars take a few weeks to make so I will post more as more and more cars are built. Well I better back to building, along deciding what car I should build next I need to decide what I should listen to on my record player. Any suggestions?