Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads
A hobby adventure
Nearly one hundred freight cars are in service on the Wheeling Freight Terminal. Several of these are undecorated cars, or painted cars that have not had decals applied. To use these models in an operating session, they need a unique tag so crews can identify the specific car on the inventory lists.
It’s time for another prototype review for the upcoming Accurail HO scale 36-foot box car models. Four variations of the model are planned. Initial paint and lettering schemes were announced a couple of months ago. Ray Breyer has another summary covering prototype cars for each of the introductory models that will have fishbelly center sills and wood ends. Ray estimates there were more than 40,000 box cars with these features built to similar designs. The initial PDF data sheet is posted on a special blog page, Accurail Prototype Data.
One last data sheet is in the works to cover the remaining prototypes Accurail has announced for their 36-foot box car models. That will be posted this summer as the release date draws near for these new models.
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Ray Breyer has completed a another prototype review for the upcoming Accurail HO scale 36-foot box car model. Four variations of the model are planned. Initial paint and lettering schemes were announced a couple of months ago. Ray’s latest summary covers prototype cars for each of the introductory models that will have straight center sills and steel ends. This is another solid resource for modelers to understand the similarities between the model and prototype. The initial PDF data sheet is posted on a special blog page, Accurail Prototype Data.
Two additional data sheets are in the works to cover the prototypes Accurail has announced for the other 36-foot box car versions. These will appear over the next few months as the release date for these new models approaches. It’s great to see such a wide variety of prototype box cars that can be represented by these new models.
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Many modelers focus on a specific point in time to guide their layout efforts. There are a number of markers that can be used to pinpoint the time an image was taken. Many railroads introduced emblems or new lettering at different points in time on their rolling stock. Steve Hedlund sent along details about Missouri-Kansas-Texas box car lettering practices that I found interesting so this blog post is mainly Steve’s. I added a couple points at the end and I’m certain this type of info will be revisited. For now, enjoy Steve’s work.
Fellow Pre-Depression Era modeler Dave Parker has sent notes on a recent resin freight car kit build. Click on any image here to review a larger size. Here’s Dave’s story.
In 1929, the New York, New Haven and Hartford received 500 class GA-2 gondolas from the Pressed Steel Car Company. These all-steel, drop-bottom gons had an inside length of 40 feet, and were numbered in the 58000-58499 series. Based on my collection of Official Registers, 496 remained in service as of 1945, but by 1955 this number had dwindled to 276 cars, and all had been rebuilt as solid-floor cars (GB classification). At some intermediate date, probably about 1950, the 58000 series apparently contained a mix of original and rebuilt cars, but I do not own an ORER that gives the exact numbers.