Tag Archives: details

Rocket Express 40 and 50-foot Rock Island Automobile boxcars

Details, Resin Freight Cars, Weathering, , ,

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Charlie Duckworth builds a pair of Rock Island automobile box cars. Click on any image here to view a larger size.

Ron Von Werder, owner of Rocket Express, offers two Rock Island (RI) automobile boxcars. Both HO scale kits are flat castings and assemble easily. I prefer using Westerfield’s RI decals for the reporting marks and numbers as his artwork looks closer to the Rock Island prototype lettering than what is supplied in the kits.

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Building resin kits on this side of the pond

Models, Resin Freight Cars, Techniques, ,
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A Southern Pacific B50-15 box car produced by Sunshine Models.

Paul Doggett has been sharing images of his completed resin freight car builds on Facebook and the resinfreightcars YahooGroup. We asked him for a little background on his inspiration and work, since he lives across the Atlantic Ocean. Click on any image here to review a larger size.

You can blame Ian Clasper for my models. I met Ian at a British NMRA meet. He arrived at the carpark on a rather nice Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle which we got talking about. Then he opened his top box and produced Kadee product boxes but not with their PS1 cars. Ian had rather exquisite resin box cars, mainly Sunshine Models, in these Kadee boxes. That really got me interested. I arranged with Ian or Barry Bennett to collect six kits from Martin Lofton, which he had kindly agreed to take to Napierville or an NMRA convention, and Ian or Barry collected them for me.

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Detail Tips

Details, Techniques, Upgrades,

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We have another guest post this week. Eric Hansmann illustrates a couple of techniques to ease installing details onto freight car models.

As prototype model railroaders, we often push our efforts to include many prototype detail elements on our freight cars. In reviewing the image above, there are several common elements that are typical of many kits. Let’s take a look at one of the smaller components and how to ease the installation process. Click on any image here to review a larger size.

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SLSF Single Sheathed boxcar Sunshine Model kit 65.3

Resin Freight Cars, Techniques, ,

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Charlie Duckworth shares a classic resin freight car kit build.

History

The SLSF 145550-144749 series were at one time the third largest block of boxcars on the road, with 1200 installed. Originally built as automobile boxcars in 1923, they had 7-foot wide door openings with a Samson radial roof. The ends had 7/8 outward facing, Murphy corrugated steel stampings. By the 1930’s, the 7-foot doors were too small for automobile loading and the cars were placed in general service. The railroad listed 1,024 of these cars in the 1940 ORER as general service box cars (XM). There are no listings in this number series by the 1956 ORER.

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