Blog contributor Charlie Duckworth added a number of fine freight car models to his HO scale fleet this past summer. He started posting progress details to the ResinFreightCarBuilders discussion list on Groups.io in early July. Here are a few of Charlie’s posts.

Wondering what the group is working on? Too hot in Omaha to do much other than hang out in a cool basement.  

SRLX reefer

I’m working on the Sunshine Models SLRX reefer. Painting the side hand holds black on white sides could be a challenge.

Painted the car and now waiting on SLRX decals from Hubert Mask. Martin Lofton did the logo as four separate decals and I’m afraid of the thickness once I start applying them. 

I’m about finished with this one. I took a couple images to look over the weathering. Martin didn’t make the red stripes long enough and I must have cut them to the ink as I got a ragged edge. I had to touch up with some Vallejo paint. The stark white car looked too toy train like, so I looked at the weathering on an O gauge scratch built model and copied it. I used Martin’s decals except for the winged logo which came from Hubert Mask’s new SLRX set.  

Ann Arbor USRA box car

Here’s a Westerfield Models USRA single-sheathed box car painted with TruColor. I lightly weathered it using Pan Pastels and military dry pigments  

Midland Valley gondola

This Funaro & Camerlengo war emergency gondola assembled easily. I and few others worked with Hubert Mask to produce Kansas, Oklahoma & Gulf and Midland Valley decals sets for these gondolas. The KO&G prototypes were steel sided, whereas the MV were in the original configuration with wood sides.

This model had been 80% finished for months but unpainted.  While I sprayed the SLRX underframe, I also shot this car using TruColor Black with a couple drops of white added. 

The Midland Valley was a 335 mile railroad that was owned by the Muskogee Company, which also owned the Kansas, Oklahoma & Gulf (327 miles) and Oklahoma City-Ada-Atoka Railway (133 miles). The KO&G gained much of its revenue as a bridge carrier between the MP and T&P with traffic from Kansas City to Ft. Worth. The Mopac tried to buy the railroads in 1963. Negotiations weren’t going in the MP’s favor so MP president D. B. Jenks diverted all the bridge traffic off the KO&G until the KO&G and MV were sold to the Mopac in 1964. The OC-A-A was bought by the ATSF. 

CB&Q XA-11A automobile box car

A Sunshine Models CB&Q XA-11A sits in fresh paint and about ready for decaling. Thanks to Nelson Moyer for sharing his completed kit photos as it helped with mine. I followed Nelson’s advice on airbrushing TruColor to get a gloss finish. I was spraying too far away. The color is TruColor CB&Q FCR with a few drops of ART yellow to lighten the shade.

Sometimes a kit jumps queue ahead of those in process of being built. This Sunshine Models 40-foot automobile boxcar ended up like that. The railroad had shopped it to create a single door by modifying the left door so it wouldn’t open.  

Toughest part of the build was getting the ‘Everywhere West’ slogan to lay down into the ribs on the door. I used four different decal softeners and finally wrestled it into place. Am sure there were a few blue words spoken when the painters had to replicate this on the prototype.   

Cotton Belt double-sheathed box car

I started this Sunshine Models SSW box car kit before going in the hospital for a procedure. Now I’m back to work on it by adding stirrups and roof walk details. The brake details on the carbody are next. At this point, I’m limited at the bench for 30 minutes at a time. It’s interesting to see how tall this car is compared to the adjacent Virginian and Q box cars.

Here’s the finished product. It was a straightforward build. The instructions remarked a few of the rebuilds received black ends so I added for variety. Having worked in the railroad industry for 38 years, and safety always being pushed, I found it odd that the ends were black, hand holds, ladders, etc.  

Imagine being an 18 year old new hire. You are working nights on third shift in a class yard and trying to get acquainted with the end of this car.

I’d worked with SSW management a few times and always wanted to add a Cotton Belt car to the layout.

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Thank you, Charlie, for sharing a few of your summer model projects on the blog. It’s great to see each of the additions to your fleet

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