Tag Archives: Western Pacific

Upgrading a Western Pacific 50-foot Automobile Box Car

Pete Hall has been busy working through a few projects. Here’s his update on a pair of HO scale Western Pacific automobile box cars.

I had two 50-foot MDC/Roundhouse single-sheathed automobile box cars with end doors that were lettered for Southern Pacific, but the bracing was wrong. They languished in a drawer until Frank Hodina sent me reprints of some old articles about this car. These cars can be made into very good models of Western Pacific (and others) 40000-series prototypes with some work. I owe a debt of gratitude to Frank and to those who have published articles on this process before me. Click on any image here to review a larger size.

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Western Pacific 50-foot Automobile Box Car

Fred Jansz sent along photos and details for the recent Virtual RPM model collection, but we thought readers might want a little more info on these models. Here’s Fred with details on upgrading HO scale Western Pacific automobile box cars.

Triggered by a 1995 Mainline Modeler article by Page Porter, I wondered if I could build one of the lesser known Western Pacific freight cars. Their 50-foot, single-sheathed automobile box cars were built by Pullman in 1929. The WP rebuilt several of these cars in 1937 with as 15-foot wide, two-and-a-half door cars renumbered 19201-19250. A prototype picture of such a car can be found in the WP equipment book by Jim Eager.

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