Starting a Yarmouth Model Works kit

Awhile back I purchased one of the very nice Yarmouth Model Works kits developed by Pierre Oliver. I was struck by his success in representing a common appearance in the earliest welded box cars: rippled side panels. In later years, the welding process was improved to minimize this effect, but in the 1950s it was often very evident. I bought a kit for an Atlantic Coast Line box car, built by American Car & Foundry.

But the model is interesting for several reasons beyond the welding ripples. It models two interesting variations on the usual boxcar components, variations which are called “carbuilder” ends and roof (“carbuilder” meaning a part used only by a particular car building company, in this case AC&F, at a time when components of that type were becoming industry standards, but the particular company used something else). 

The carbuilder ends in this case are essentially the Standard Railway Equipment Co. (SRE) Improved Dreadnaught end or IDE, but without the intermediate small ribs. The photo below shows these intermediate ribs between the large ribs, in the standard version of the  SRE IDE end.

The AC&F carbuilder end, however, though produced by SRE, omitted the small intermediate ribs between the major ribs. This can be seen in the prototype photo below of one of the ACL cars (AC&F photo). Note also the 8-foot door, unusual for a 1951-built box car. (For more background on these AC&F box cars, see the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia or RPC, volumes 26 and 29.)

Not visible above is the AC&F carbuilder roof. This was a really unusual design, with a pair of flattish ribs in each panel and a small raised area between the ribs at the outer end. I haven’t found a good prototype photo which shows these unusual features well, so I show below the model’s roof. I think the rib profiles can be seen here (you can click on the image to enlarge it).

The first step recommended in the kit instructions is to glue a pair of steel nuts inside the floor, before gluing the floor into the body. I used my usual choice, 5/8-11 nuts, attached with canopy glue. This is shown below, along with the body, prior to cleaning it up. You can see the rippled side sheets of the welded 12-panel sides.

But before putting the floor into the body, I drilled the bolster holes for truck screws, and tapped them 2-56. Meanwhile, I examined the kit directions, which merely advise, “Add the cross bearers, crossties . . .” with only an inconclusive model photo for guidance as to which ones are which. Luckily RPC 26 contains a very useful view (AC&F photo) of one of the AC&F cars, looking upward through the side door opening, and showing the underframe members at that location.

Clearly in the photo above, the two underframe cross-members at the door corners are cross bearers, and the one between them is a cross tie. I will show more about the model work on this point in a future post.

Tony Thompson

A Richard Hendrickson freight car

After Richard passed away in 2014, I inherited most of his modeling projects and materials, along with all his unbuilt kits and existing freight car fleet. As some readers may remember, I conducted on-line auctions to sell the kits and some brass freight cars, while the Santa Fe Society handled an auction of his Santa Fe brass locomotives and passenger cars. I also handled gifting over 100 of Richard’s freight cars to many of his friends and associates.

[For anyone who does not know, or has forgotten, who Richard Hendrickson was, it might be of interest to read the memorial essay of tribute I wrote after he passed away in June 2014. That essay can be found here: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-memoriam-richard-hendrickson.html .]  

A couple of his unfinished freight car projects could be completed with a reasonable amount of effort, such as his very interesting Santa Fe Class FE-25 automobile car (the concluding post in my description of that project is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/11/hendrickson-auto-car-part-6.html ). More recently, I completed his model of a Georgia Railroad USRA box car that had been rebuilt (read my description here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/07/another-hendrickson-project.html ).

Another project to come to light was his partly converted gondola to be a C&O car. I know what he intended, because both a photo and decals were with the model. Here is the photo Richard had with this project. Evidence that I mention below indicates that this is an AC&F builder photo.

What was the prototype background? From 1930 to 1937, the Chesapeake & Ohio purchased 5000 new steel gondolas, with steel solid floors and fixed ends, numbered 40000–44999. The last 1000, built by AC&F, had different ends, changing from an angled heap shield to an oval one, as you see above. These were remarkably durable cars. In 1953, the year I model, the Official Railway Equipment Register or ORER shows 3974 out of 4000 cars with the angled heap shields, and 996 of the 1000 with oval shields. Only 30 out of 5000 cars had left the roster in the intervening 20 or so years. 

Below is a Cycopedia builder photo (again, by AC&F). These 40-foot, 70-ton gondolas with 9 side ribs have a distinctive appearance.

One way these cars can readily be modeled is the way Richard was doing, using the old Roundhouse metal high-side gondola. It was a cast white-metal kit. His model has at least the Roundhouse sides and floor, held together with small screws. He modified the Dreadnaught ends, and added the distinctive rounded C&O “heap shields” with styrene. The sides have the correct rivet rows inside to match the rib locations. Richard had added brass drop grab irons to the B end.

He also had built a fairly complete underbody, re-locating the brake gear from the Roundhouse original positions (you can see the scars below) and adding all rodding and also the lever carrier hangers. However, he chose to omit most of the piping, something I usually do too. The one thing he had not done on the underbody was to replace the Roundhouse narrow coupler boxes.Here you can clearly see the characteristic Roundhouse screw attachment of sides to floor, at each corner.

The B end of the car needs a brake platform and brake wheel, along with grab irons. I will continue with this project and complete the model, including a decision about the coupler boxes, then attend to paint and decals, followed by weathering.

Tony Thompson

Modernizing a PFE model

Recently a friend approached me with a model he had recently purchased, a Pacific Fruit Express Class R-40-2 car sold by Fox Valley Models (reportedly the former MTH model product). He had not realized it was a 1920s paint scheme (he models the 1950s) and did recognize that the yellow paint scheme would have been long gone by the time he models.

Here is a photo of the model. It is in some ways nicely done, with wire grab irons, and nice crisp sill steps. It even even has separately applied UP and SP emblems, evidently to represent the porcelain enamel medallions that PFE applied for a few years after 1928 (and then removed to avoid the hazard of them falling off the cars). The outside-metal roof surface being black and wood roof parts boxcar red is correct, as is all the lettering, for a car built in 1928.

Below is a photo of the prototype car class (Steve Peery collection). This photo, and considerable information about the prototype cars, can be found in Chapter 6 of Pacific Fruit Express (2nd edition), Thompson, Church and Jones, Signature Press, 2000.

But in early 1929, PFE changed its car color from yellow (an Armour Yellow, not the lemon yellow on this model) to a light orange. [Eight years later, SP would adopt this color for its new Daylight trains, and it became known as Daylight Orange, though originated in use by PFE.] The entire PFE fleet was entirely orange by the early 1930s, certainly before 1934. So the color of the model would be incorrect for any layout set later than 1934.

I won’t go further into PFE painting history, but an excellent source is available. Extensive information on PFE painting and lettering over time can be found in Southern Pacific Freight Car Painting and Lettering Guide, Dick Harley and Anthony Thompson, SPH&TS, 2016.

The Class R-40-2 design happens to have been characterized by grab iron rows at the right end of each car side, the last PFE class so equipped. From that time forward, new PFE cars would receive ladders in that location. When the cars of Class R-40-2 were refurbished in the late 1930s, they would have lost the grab iron rows along with the yellow color. 

Class R-40-2 was also the last PFE class to have a wood-framed superstructure. Class R-40-4 and all later wood-sheathed cars received steel superstructure framing. In the late 1930s, such framing was even extended to rebuilt cars. By 1950, nearly all the older cars which still had wood superstructure framing had been rebuilt or scrapped — including every single car of Class R-40-2.

Accordingly, I had to tell my friend that this model, to be used in a 1950s layout, would have to receive ladders in place of its grab irons, and be repainted orange, and would have to be renumbered as a rebuilt class or as Class R-40-4. The best choice would probably be one of the post-1948 paint schemes in which all side hardware was orange instead of black, to avoid having to repaint all those details black by hand in the repainting process.

My friend was not very interested in doing a total repaint, and I didn’t volunteer to take on the task. At that point, I suggested the model would look nice in his display case, he nodded sadly, and departed. But if anyone reading this account wants this model, let me know. I may be able to arrange getting it to you.

Tony Thompson

Restoring an old Ulrich hopper car

I was recently browsing in my stash of old or unused freight cars, and came across an Ulrich metal hopper car from my teenage years. Among other things, it has Devore couplers in Devore draft gear boxes. The wire grab irons and lettering looked pretty good, so I decided to see what could be done with it — and to check whether it was a model of an actual prototype. Back in those days, there were relatively few commercial freight car models, and many were lettered for pretty much any popular railroad. 

(I have worked on a number of old Ulrich HO scale freight cars over the years, and have reported some of the projects in past blog posts. To find them, if you’re interested, use “Ulrich” as the search term in the search box at right. The Ulrich company, founded in the late 1940s by Charles J. Ulrich, was a mainstay of HO scale modeling the 1950s, and later became part of the Walthers line.)

Below is the model. Aside from the heavy sill steps, cast onto the white-metal car sides, it doesn’t look too bad. The model, unlike Ulrich hopper cars in later years, did not have cast-on grab irons at the right of each car side, but had free-standing Athearn metal ladders, not a bad idea under the “three-foot distance” rule. This is an immediate clue that this is an early Ulrich hopper.

Is this prototype? It sure is. Norfolk & Western built 12,500 cars like this in the 1930s, and the Ulrich model is a definite match. Below is a prototype photo (N&W photo), showing the first of these cars at Roanoke in 1936. You can just see the angled heap shields, just like the Ulrich model. Incidentally, anyone with even a faint interest in coal hoppers should own Bob Karig’s superb book, Coal Cars (University of Scranton Press, 2007), where I found this photo.

In 1953, the year I model, there were more than 8700 cars of these dimensions, though Class HL is not called out separately. That certainly means that an N&W hopper chosen at random might well be a car like this model.

Now I expect that at least some readers will be thinking, “What on earth is he thinking about, coal hoppers in California?” And in some ways, that’s true. But coal was certainly used in a number of ways in California at the time I model, as I discussed in an earlier blog post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/02/coal-in-california.html ). 

As mentioned in that post, little coal was ever found in California, and none of it very good, a natural result of California’s geologic history (marvelously explained for laymen in John McPhee’s excellent book, Assembling California, 1993). Accordingly, lots of it was imported, usually by rail, and sometimes from far away: thus an N&W hopper could be okay.

For those not familiar with the Ulrich models, they had cast white metal sides, ends, interior braces, and hopper gates, with sheet brass slope sheets. Thus it’s not surprising that the model weighs over 3 ounces, above the NMRA recommended weight for this car length. The model has metal sprung trucks, nice looking but with pre-RP 25 wheel flanges, so I will replace the entire truck.

The familiar Ulrich hopper kit of later years had a cast metal underframe, so that the assembly process would be as shown in the instruction sheet below (from the HOseeker website, https://hoseeker.net/Ulrich.html ). It is clear how the parts go together, and it makes a sturdy model. But this is not my model. (You can click to enlarge if you wish.)

My hopper, instead, happens to be the original Ulrich hopper, which had a pine center sill and balsa bolster/slope sheet supports. It also has applied ladders instead of the cast-on grab irons seen in the directions above. The directions for this somewhat different kit (sides and ends are like the later kits) is shown below (again, HOseeker). The wood parts are in the drawing at the top of the directions.

I will disassemble the underframe parts that support the draft gear, replace the balsa with styrene, and modify to accept a Kadee coupler box. I’ll describe that work in a future post.

Tony Thompson

My latest “Getting Real” column

Most readers know by now that I am one of a group of columnists who, in rotation, write the “Getting Real” column about prototype modeling in the on-line magazine, Model Railroad Hobbyist, or MRH. My most recent column has just appeared in the November issue. In recent years, MRH has been published in two parts: one that remains free to read on-line or download (visit www.mrhmag.com ) and in a second section, called “Running Extra,” which carries a fee, either for single issues or via subscription (cheaper per issue). The “Getting Real” columns have been appearing in “Running Extra.”

My new column is about modeling Southern Pacific flat cars. The idea to do that was stimulated by a question I was asked recently about the SP fleet of such cars, but also has a background in a talk I used to give some years ago, entitled “SP cars you can model,” emphasizing commercial models of the most common SP freight cars. Maybe that talk should be updated and revived. But that’s another story.

(For a full background on SP flat car history, my source is my book, Volume 3 in the series, Southern Pacific Freight Cars, Signature Press, 2004, covering automobile cars and flat cars.)

In the column, I began at the turn of the 20th century, with the first fully standard SP flat cars with steel underframes in any numbers, and the first to carry Harriman-standard class numbers, classes F-50-1, -2, and -3. The “F” stands for flat car, the “50” means 50-ton nominal capacity, and the last number is the individual class. Since those earliest cars were mostly gone from the fleet by the year I model, 1953, I have not modeled one.

But following those cars, SP adopted a flat car design that would be followed, with only minor changes, for over 20 more years and a dozen more flat car classes. This design originated in the Harriman era and thus is rightly called a “Harriman flat car.” Below is a good photo of one of the later classes in service at San Diego, Class F-50-8 car SP 38892, photographed by Chet McCoid on September 26, 1954 (Bob’s Photo collection).

The important things to notice about this car are the straight side sill, the blocking between the stake pockets which supports the wide deck reaching out to the outer edge of the stake pockets (called an “overhanging deck”), and the fishbelly center sill. All these features are well captured by the Owl Mountain Models kit for these cars (see my review of this nice kit at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/09/building-owl-mountain-flat-car.html ).

After World War II, SP turned to American Car & Foundry, and adopted their flat car design for several car orders. I went into some detail about these in the column. The most important cars were the 53-ft., 6-in. long ones, classes F-70-6 and -7, the latter a class of 2050 cars. Both classes are well represented by the Red Caboose HO scale model (dies now owned by the SP Historical & Technical Society, or SPH&TS, who have done a few re-runs of this model). 

Among the most characteristic loads carried by these flat cars in the 1950s was lumber, as part of a nationwide building boom. Shown below on my layout is a Red Caboose Class F-70-7 car with an Owl Mountain Models lumber load (for more on my building of this load kit, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/08/open-car-loads-lumber-from-owl-mountain.html ).

I also described a few details about modifications to these flat cars by SP. An important modification was the addition of bulkheads for plasterboard service. In 1949, SP began adding low bulkheads to some of its new flat cars, and the SPH&TS has offered a really nice kit to duplicate these bulkheads (see my review at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/07/modeling-sps-bulkhead-flat-cars.html ). Here is a Red Caboose flat car with these bulkheads, being moved by a Baldwin road-switcher on my layout.

Loads in the earliest days were usually tarped rather than wrapped, but by 1953, wrapped loads were appearing. Here is my bulkhead flat car with a load made by Jim Elliott. Incidentally, loading plasterboard to the height of these bulkheads did amount to a nominally 70-ton load, the capacity of the cars, so there was a reason for the low bulkheads.

In 1953 and later, SP also converted dozens of Class F-70-7 flat cars for introduction of piggyback service, which began in June 1953. I showed prototype photos and some models, comparable to a recent post in this blog, which is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/sp-piggyback-part-4-progress-on-3d.html .

Finally, I briefly covered some of the SP heavy-duty flat cars, the F-125 depressed-center cars and the F-200 four-truck cars. As those have been covered in some detail in my blog posts, I won’t go into them here. If you’re interested, the following posts can be consulted, along with the MRH article:

F-125: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/05/an-sp-class-f-125-1-flat-car-part-2.html

F-200: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/05/sp-200-ton-flat-cars-part-5.html

It was interesting to review prototype information and modeling resources to write a summary about SP flat cars of the early 1950s. I hope it was of some interest or value to MRH readers.

Tony Thompson

An old Shake ’n’ Take project: Conclusion

This series of posts describes a freight car build that originated as a so-called “Shake ‘n’ Take” kitbashing project at the 2015 meeting of Prototype Rails in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Previous posts in the series gave the prototype background, links to project directions, replacement of original car body ends, and addition of details. In the previous post, Part 3, the model had been given a coat of Tamiya primer (see that preceding post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/an-old-shake-n-take-project-part-3.html ).

As stated in that previous post, the model was now ready for its final paint coat, and that was applied. The model was also removed from its “paint shop” trucks and give the correct ones that it will operate with. In this condition, it’s shown below. 

Next came application of decals. A very nice decal set for this car was assembled by Steve Hile, and the lettering elements were all well arranged and complete. I enjoy this part of a freight car project, when the model assumes its identity as an individual car. Once all decals were in place, the car was given a coat of clear flat.

Next, the car needed to be weathered. I used my tried and true method of washes made from acrylic tube paints (see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right corner of the present post). Then, after another protective coat of clear flat, I added route cards and a few chalk marks. Here is the completed model.

Incidentally, the black paint patch under the right-hand door is the service stencil for the air brake reservoir (and was only on this side of the car). The black sill patch toward the right of the car side is a repacking stencil, applied on both sides. You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.

Just for comparison, here is the prototype photo I relied on in carrying out the project. You will note the same paint patches that were applied to the model, are visible here too, and were the reason they were applied to the model. (Chet McCoid photo, San Diego, Dec. 26, 1954, Bob’s Photo collection)

Finally, I want to wrap this up with an image of the heading for the project directions, appropriately crediting Richard Hendrickson for the original idea of the conversion, along with Greg Martin’s management and Schuyler Larrabee’s editing. Thanks, guys.

This concludes work on my 2015 Shake ‘n’ Take project from Cocoa  Beach that year. As always, an interesting project with some learning aspects, and a distinctive freight car as the product.

Tony Thompson

Small project: a Maine Central gondola

In 1939, the Maine Central Railroad received an order of 150 low-side steel gondolas, 40 feet long, numbered 17000–17149. They were evidently durable cars; by the time I model, 1953, all 150 were still in service. A recent discussion of these cars on the Steam Era Freight Cars list (or STMFC) made me think about them.

Do I need a model of one of these cars for a layout set on the West Coast? No, but such a car certainly might appear anywhere in the United States, so it could fit in. I believe it was Tim O’Connor who observed that small railroads, or small car groups like this one, are statistically invisible in the national freight car fleet by themselves, but in total, they add up to well over 5 percent of the fleet. So you do need to have a selected few.

A good prototype photo, shown by Tim O’Connor on STMFC, shows one of these cars at Everett, MA on July 2, 1950. The car has the round “Pine Tree” herald, introduced about 1949, but the as-built cars had the “Box Name” emblem, and many cars continued to carry that paint scheme as late as the 1960s.

This is of interest because years ago, Ertl Models introduced a low-side 40-foot steel gondola model in HO scale. I picked up one in Atlantic Coast Line markings, though the model does not match the ACL cars of this type (which is why it was still in the box). The model was manufactured in China and is ready-to-run, with free-standing grab irons and sill steps. The “wood” floor in this photo needs to be trimmed to fit better.

The models also have quite a nice underbody, with all equipment well presented.

While reading the STMFC discussions, including the point that drawings by Chuck Yungkurth of these MEC gondolas were in the May 1989 Railroad Model Craftsman, it occurred to me I could repaint my model and letter it for MEC. As it happens, Highball Graphics makes a Maine Central set that can letter several different freight cars, including this gondola, set F-218 (see it at: https://highballgraphics.com/product/maine-central-steam-era-freight-equipment/ ). I ordered a set. 

Then I went ahead and repainted the Ertl car body black, while masking the couplers and temporarily replacing the trucks with my “paint shop trucks.”

With that paint in place, I proceeded with the nice Highball Graphics decals. These were straightforward to apply, though possibly a little oversize for the gondola.Here’s the lettered model, still on its “paint shop” trucks.

With lettering completed, I weathered the outside of the car moderately, and the inside considerably more. My method was my usual approach using washes of acrylic tube paints (for more on this, see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of the present post). This dulls the lettering, along with softening the stark black car color. With that step finished, I added a coat of clear flat, followed by a few chalk marks and route cards.

This simple project, repainting and re-lettering an existing ready-to-run model, has been interesting and, as I always feel when completing f freight car project, definitely fun.

Tony Thompson

SP piggyback, Part 4: progress on the 3D models

In this series of posts about Southern Pacific’s early piggyback operation, I provided historical photo coverage, including the flat car conversions that SP made for the original service. That particular post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/sp-piggyback-part-3-piggyback-service.html .) Now I want to turn to modeling of these flat cars and their trailers.

Last fall, I posted about some superb HO scale models 3D-printed and given to me by Andrew J. Chier, models of Pacific Motor Trucking (PMT) piggyback trailers, and two of the Southern Pacific’s original piggyback flat cars. (PMT was an SP subsidiary.) I included in that post a photo of AJ’s own completed models. Since then, I’ve been slowly progressing with completing these models, and that’s the subject of the present post. (You can see that previous post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/more-amazing-3-d-printing.html .).

My first step was to free the trailer bodies from their as-printed supports, clean them up with care (because small details are fragile), and then give them a coat of primer. I used Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer (White)” for this. Below are two of the trailers, as primed. The excellent and complete detailing of these models is even more evident with the light color of the primer.

I did the same white primer on the flat cars, and then painted them with the Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer (Oxide Red).” It’s a bit too red for SP freight car color, but when weathered, the difference won’t be very evident. As with the trailers, the remarkable thing about this 3D-printed model is the completeness, with all the trailer support and tie-down equipment in place.

The question can certainly  be raised about the photo above, whether any of the trailer equipment was a different color than the car body. I believe, after reviewing a great many photos, that the answer is “no.” 

The prototype image below will show what I mean. It shows the relatively new piggyback terminal at the site of Los Angeles Shops, with trailer unloading in progress. It’s part of an SP company photo, dated 1955, and the complete photo is in my Volume 3 of the series, Southern Pacific Freight Cars, on pages 284–285. I can see no indication that anything differs from body color.

Next I needed to add weight to the flat car. The design of AJ’s model cleverly allows for this, with a pocket in the underframe. I showed this in the previous post (link in uppermost paragraph of the present post). I cut some 3/8-inch lead sheet from McMaster-Carr to fit, and attached it with canopy glue. Since it will be invisible, I haven’t painted the lead. The remainder of the underframe, not shown here, is a part that fits right on top of this.

In addition to this sheet of lead, there is a 3D-printed frame part that goes over it, and that part has effectively “pockets” that permit adding additional, smaller pieces of lead sheet. Again, I fixed these in place with canopy glue. In this way, the weight can be raised to the vicinity of the NMRA standard for this car length.

From here, the flat car project is ready for the details to be added (grab irons, sill steps, brake staff and wheel) and also lettering. The trailers are primed and are ready for their red and orange paint. I’ll turn to all that in a future post.

Tony Thompson

An old Shake ’n’ Take project, Part 3

This freight car build is the 2015 Shake ’n’ Take project, as they are known, from that year’s “Prototype Rails” meet at Cocoa Beach, Florida. The prototype is a 40-foot double-door box car of the Rock Island; I showed a representative prototype photo in the first post in this series (here’s a link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/an-older-shake-n-take-project.html  ). 

Participants in these projects get a car body, kit parts, and a full set of replacement parts, but I was a late registrant and only got part of the project contents. Thus I am using somewhat different parts and occasionally a different approach, but am trying to follow the original kit directions. Ways to acquire those directions were given in the previous post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/an-old-shake-n-take-project-part-2.html ).

In the previous post in the series (just cited above), I showed completion of the “heavy” work of cutting the body and replacing the car ends. Now I undertook adding details to the car body. 

I began with ladders, and found in my stash some old Details West ladders with a rung spacing matching what is on the Athearn/Roundhouse car body. These were used on the car ends, and an additional ladder was cut up to make the unusual grab iron arrangement at the left of each car side. I chose not to remove the side ladders, as they are not excessively oversize.

I then added end placard boards from the remnants of a Details West parts set, and used styrene rod for the end grab iron rungs (the end moldings included the attachment points). The A end is shown below. Note that all sill steps are now removed, as the prototype ones were a different shape than those on the project kit body.

The details added to the A end, shown above, were also added to the B end. In addition, the brake gear details were added to the B end of the car. From the prototype photos in kit directions (see second paragraph of the present post for a link), the hand brakes were Ajax, and I used the Kadee wheel, along with an Ajax gear box from my parts stash. 

I continued by adding A-Line sill steps, along with Tichy corner grabs on the lateral running boards. Those grabs were modeled using the same method I showed in a recent post on another project (see my description at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-hendrickson-usra-box-car-conclusion.html ). 

Below is a photo of the model at this point, resting on “paint shop” temporary trucks and ready for primer. I should mention that I don’t always prime models. With some paint, such as TruColor which will not adhere to resin, priming first is essential, but in other cases, it may not be necessary. For the present case, with a variety of materials in the added details, and the prominent GN lettering of the original kit, which I planned to cover rather than strip, primer seemed like a good idea.

For primer, I used the excellent Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer (White)” because I know it gives excellent coverage in a thin coat, and the spray can works very nicely, nothing like cheap “rattle cans” might do. I have now used it for a number of projects, and have always been quite happy with the results. Below is the model with its primer coat (and couplers taped). You will note that the huge GN emblem is still faintly visible, but the darker boxcar red final color will cover this easily.

This concludes all the construction and detailing work on this model. The final steps are paint and lettering and I will take those up in a future post.

Tony Thompson

The peculiar Walthers steel reefer, Part 2

Previously I wrote about the numerous oddities in lettering on the new Walthers “mainline” refrigerator car model, particularly on the version pretending to be a PFE Class R-30-13 car. Since it is a steel car body, this is obviously beyond help, disappointing because the lettering is actually quite accurately rendered — for a wood car. That earlier post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-peculiar-new-walthers-steel-reefer.html . 

To make the lettering accurate, the car needs almost everything re-lettered. But let’s see what can be simply done to make the biggest improvements. To me, the easiest fix on the model is to replace the wrong UP medallion on the side (left side) with the SP emblem toward the B end, with a black and white one. For this you want Microscale set 87-501, but be sure it’s from within a few years of purchase. Microscale continues to apply original numbers to revised and improved sets, of which this is one.

Here’s what it should look like (PFE photo), a repeat from the previous post for clarity.

The repack stencil, the distinctive PFE design with pointed rectangles, just visible at the bottom of the photo above, needs to be added too, and this is in the same Microscale set. Finally, a reweigh date appropriate to your modeling era should replace the “NEW” date on the model. After January 1, 1949, the required reweigh interval was 48 months, so I have to use 1950 or later reweigh dates on my 1953 layout. Here is the re-done left side.

This simple approach can’t be repeated on the other side, the right side, however, because the SP emblem is now away from the B end. For that arrangement, typical of 1946–1948, the UP emblem would be the one without the word “railroad” in the blue field, and like the black-white emblems, these are readily available in the Microscale decal sets. For this, the desired set number is 87-414. It also contains the repack rectangles. Here is the re-done right side.

One easy detail to fix on the “R-40-10” model is the corner sill steps, which on the prototype were orange in the 1948 paint scheme; this is an easy correction. And many Class R-40-10 cars, starting in October 1950, were refurbished and upgraded, visibly receiving steel-grid running boards (like this model) and car fans. One could also apply Preco fan boxes to this model, taken from Details West set RD-215, but given all the other compromises, it doesn’t seem needed.

This leads me to comment that some might contemplate correcting the rest of the model, replacing the incorrect roof, carving off the molded-on ladders and grab irons, and replacing them with free-standing details, and so on. To me, this would be a waste of time. InterMountain makes an excellent R-40-10 model, without any of these issues, while it would be a lot of work on the Walthers body to come close. 

So “saving” this model, to me, means making it acceptable as a “main line” model, all right in a passing train but perhaps not in switching, where it could be scrutinized. I completed the work I want to do by I painting the corner sill steps orange, and the very shiny wheel faces dark gray, then giving the whole model a coat of flat finish, preparatory to weathering.  I followed my typical method, washes using acrylic tube paints, as has been described and explained in my “Reference pages” (see link at top right of this post).

In this photo, you can see that I’ve also added a few chalk marks, and a route card applied where the route card board should be, at the bolster, though Walthers has not molded that detail on this model.

That completes the paint scheme revisions I wanted to do, to at least make the paint scheme(s) of this car credible, suitable for use as a “mainline” car. The shortcomings of the car body will be ignored. I’ve gone as far as I want to with this one.

Tony Thompson

The peculiar new Walthers steel reefer

I have seen promotional material for the new Walthers “mainline” refrigerator car in HO scale, and wondered what it might be a model of. Since their ads have shown a Fruit Growers steel car, perhaps that was their goal. But they are also marketing two Pacific Fruit Express paint schemes on this car body, so I wanted to evaluate those models.

I have no idea where they got the ideas for their two paint schemes. Neither one makes any historical sense. But before I get to that, let’s look at the car body itself. The photo below shows that the model has molded-on ladders and grab irons. The rendition of the rivet lines of the steel body are not bad, nor is the door appearance. Ice hatches do resemble the Holland hatch covers used by PFE for a time. The running board represents a steel grid, and it is a see-through grid. 

That’s the good news. But the roof is a late-1920s style flat panel roof, not the prototype’s raised panel roof. And the underframe has no relation to any PFE underframe I know of. Aside from the roof and the relatively invisible underframe, the body is not a bad version of PFE’s first steel reefers, Class R-40-10.

Now to the PFE paint schemes they have chosen. The one shown above is a mish-mash of components from different eras, and one wonders what they thought they were doing on this steel body scheme.  I will come back to it, in favor of beginning with the single-emblem scheme, cars that are lettered as Class R-30-13. It’s shown below in a Walthers photo.

This scheme had a UP “Overland Route” slogan emblem on one side, which you see above, and an SP emblem on the other side. The paint scheme as shown above was in use prior to 1936. That’s because it’s the pre-1936 UP emblem with the word “System” in the blue field. That would be all right for the time the R-30-13 cars were built, as would all of the rest of the lettering. But as mentioned, all this decoration is on a steel body, while the lettering is for a wood-sheathed car.

These single-emblem cars have car numbers beginning with “40,” consistent with Class R-40-10, but they are lettered as Class R-30-13, a car with wood-sheathed sides and ends and an outside-metal roof, wood running board, and K brakes: none of those features are on the model. 

In a way, it’s a shame they went to all the trouble to accurately letter the car this way. If it were just a wood car body, the lettering would be quite nice. For comparison, below is a prototype photo (Pullman for PFE). Incidentally, the deep underframe (whitewashed for the photo) is yet another feature missing from the Walthers representation of Class R-30-13.

Now let me return to the steel car. This second paint scheme has car numbers beginning with “41,” again consistent with Class R-40-10, and for that class the car body makes far better sense, even the lack of placard boards on car sides (but unaccountably, they do have placard boards on the ends). Unfortunately, all the dimensional and capacity lettering and data is copied exactly from the R-30-13 model, entirely wrong in almost every detail for a steel-body Class R-40-10.

But the emblems are a problem, too. The chosen “two-emblem” paint scheme, with both railroad emblems on both sides, essentially a 1946–1950 scheme, is fine, but they have chose to letter a red-white-blue UP emblem with the word “railroad” in the blue field, something never done with that emblem. In fact, the first UP emblem to contain the word “railroad” was the black-white one introduced in 1950.

The PFE photo below shows the black-white UP emblem. Clearly Walthers got the white border and the word “railroad” in the upper field, but chose to stay with red-white-blue, an imaginary scheme (it’s shown in the upper photo in this post). 

Moreover, as is obvious in the model photos above, Walthers painted all side hardware orange (ladders, grab irons, and door hardware), consistent with PFE practice beginning in 1948. From that time until 1950, the all-orange sides co-existed with the color two-herald scheme, as mentioned.

Where can you find all these lettering details as to arrangement and dates of use? An excellent book from the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society, entitled Southern Pacific Freight Car Painting and Lettering Guide (SPH&S, 2016) contains a thorough and clearly presented description of all the PFE lettering schemes down through the years, organized and written by Dick Harley.

Quite aside from curiosity about how and why Walthers made its peculiar lettering decisions, as a modeler the far more interesting question is, what can be done with this model if you’d like it to be more prototypical? I will turn to that topic in a following post.

Tony Thompson

An old Shake ’n’ Take project, Part 2

In the preceding post of this series, I introduced my first steps on the Shake ’n’ Take project from the 2015 Cocoa Beach meeting and described the background for these projects and Greg Martin’s role. This particular build is a Rock Island 40-foot double-door box car. I showed the first project step, which was to cut out the car ends, as they had to be replaced. That post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/an-older-shake-n-take-project.html . 

With the ends cut out, the car body is pretty floppy, so I immediately made end bulkheads from 0.030-inch styrene sheet, as suggested in the kit directions. (You can obtain these directions if you wish; the original instructions are at: https://groups.io/g/shake-n-take/files/2015%20Shake-n-Take%20RI%20161205%20Auto%20Box%20instrructions.pdf. You must sign up as a member to view and download.) Another option for instructions is the excellent write-up by George Toman on the Resin Car Works site, though George went much farther in detailing than I plan to do. Here is a link to that description: http://blog.resincarworks.com/rock-island-40-foot-automobile-boxcar/ .

The inside corners of the end bulkheads were braced with scale 6 x 8-inch styrene strip, attaching everything with styrene cement. Addition of these restored the car body to a reasonably solid configuration.

I turned my attention at this point to the underframe. I had decided not to pursue adding stringers or cross-bearers in correct location or piping for the brake gear, since that is all essentially invisible in normal operation. But the chain tubes can be seen in a side view, so I added them. Following the kit directions, I used 0.062-inch styrene rod (Evergreen no. 222), drilling holes for them located as shown in the project directions.

Note also in the photo above that I have added styrene strips on the top side (as it will be when installed in the car) to act as gluing surfaces inside the body. The C&BT Shops floor is not a snug fit in the Roundhouse body and will need to be glued. I also added two steel nuts, 5/8-11, which were glued to the floor with canopy glue to weight the model. Here’s a view from above. The chain tube length above the floor, of course, doesn’t matter.

The full set of project parts included a resin piece for the correct-profile side sill reinforcement under the double doors. Since I didn’t have that part, I decided to reconfigure what is on the body that was supplied, then add rivets after the body was primed. Here is a first cut at modifying the side sill. Note I have also removed the molded-on grab irons at this point.

Next I attached the replacement 5/5 ends to the car, using styrene cement. Their contour was adjusted a little along the top of the end to match the contour of the Roundhouse roof. Note also in this view that the holes in the roof have been filled with styrene. The floor is not yet installed. Some of the body’s molded sill steps are still present in this view, but will be replaced later.

With all the heavier work on the body done, the next steps are to add all the correct details. I will describe that work in a future post.

Tony Thompson