Bryan Steckler shares his work in backdating a pair of Resin Car Works Kit 19.01 Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) automobile box cars. Here’s the scoop from Bryan!

When Resin Car Works announced their CNJ 19000 series automobile cars, I quickly bought a pair. The CNJ is a staple railroad of the Northeast, and one that has a limited amount of accurately modeled equipment.

When I received the kits, I discovered that they, like the Sunshine kits they’re based on, reflect the appearance after these cars were rebuilt in the mid-1940s. This is only a couple years beyond my modeling year of 1940. Not wanting to throw in the towel on these, I started researching what would be needed to backdate them to my era.

Determining changes

After discussing the kit and the prototype with Ted Culotta and Eric Hansmann, I determined three changes that need to be made to the kit. First, the side sill needs to be removed. Second, I need to replace the Youngstown doors with Creco doors. Lastly, K brake components need to be installed as opposed to the AB parts that come with the kit.

Removing the side sills would not be challenging, but changing the door hardware was another matter. After researching, the only Creco door-and-a-half part I could find was available from Westerfield Models. However, this casting is a scale eleven feet wide by eight feet tall; a foot-and-a-half shorter than the nine-and-a-half foot door height on the CNJ car. I would need to splice two sets of doors together to make one the correct height.

Changing the doors

I began by milling the Youngstown doors off of the body casting using a drill press with an X-Y table.

This allowed me to precisely control the horizontal and vertical position of the bit while keeping the body of the car level and secure. I raised the drill press table to the necessary height rather than bring the bit down to meet the car, to ensure a cut as even as possible.

After milling, I filled any low spots on the door area with Squadron Putty and sanded it smooth after it cured.

I then marked the location of the doors on the car side and centered the Westerfield Models casting. It was at this point that I cut off the side sill extensions.

Once I was satisfied with the sanding, I began to section the doors. I made three cuts, one in the middle of each panel, to increase the door height evenly. I used a scrap of styrene as a straightedge to align the door sections evenly and glued them to the car side.

I measured the height of each cut with a pair of calipers. I cut a slice of that thickness out of the second door and sanded it to fit snug. I kept the doors in the pairs I received them, to minimize changes in thickness where the splices occurred.

Once the spliced doors were glued down, I applied Testors putty followed by Mr Surfacer 1000. Mr Surfacer is an amazing product. It is a thin putty, slightly thicker than paint. It can be applied in very small amounts and sanded to an extremely fine finish. It’s available either in jars or aerosol cans. I have also used it to smooth 3D prints.

Brake system

Once the doors were completed, I followed the instructions from the Resin Car Works kit Extras page and the group build blog posts by Jerry Hamsmith. I used a Tichy KC brake casting with the included linkages. The brake levers and rods are the same as used with the AB brake upgrades in the mid-1940s.

Paint and finishing

I painted the cars with Tamiya grey primer, followed by Tru-Color CNJ freight car red. Tru-Color makes a wide variety of freight car browns. I find their paint very easy to work with, however it requires a primer coat as it does not adhere well to resin.

The Tru-Color paint dries to a gloss finish ready for decaling. I used Westerfield Models CNJ single-sheathed boxcar decals for the reporting marks, numbers, and logo along with Mount Vernon Shops X28 automobile car decals for the Automobile lettering, capacity and dimensional data. My good friend Nicholas Gotwalt weathered the cars.

Overall, I am largely satisfied with the finished product, but the doors have imperfections. I would write these off as 14 year old cars seeing heavy use and little care, which may have been the case during my era. However, I explored an option of 3D printed replacement doors, again designed by my good friend Nicholas Gotwalt.

While these doors were not ready in time for me to complete these cars, we hope to have them available as a detail part through the resurrected Bethlehem Car Works line. Anyone attempting this conversion in the future may have an easier time backdating these CNJ automobile box car kits with cleaner end product.

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Many thanks to Bryan Steckler for sharing techniques for backdating these CNJ kits. I hope this inspires modelers to think beyond what comes in the box and consider modifications to reflect the prototypes.

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