Southern Pacific B-50-15

Resin Car Works web guy Eric Hansmann has been working on an HO scale boxcar kit. Here’s a progress report.

I needed to break out of a summer slump so I started a few resin freight car kits. This Southern Pacific B-50-15 boxcar is leading the pack out of the car shops. It’s the latest kit from Westerfield Models. The lead image shows the current kit progress.

The Southern Pacific installed 3,900 of these cars in 1925 and 1926. There were a few roof, door, and truck variations among seven different car series on the SP and their ML&T subsidiary. The Westerfield data sheet shares notes all of the hardware variations and is a great reference to understand what kit is at hand. I model 1926 and am building an original version to add to my period fleet.

The castings are very crisp with a one-piece car body. This would be a good resin kit to learn the basics. In addition to the one-piece body, the car has ladders which minimize the need to drill lots of holes for grab iron installation.

Here’s the car interior. Westerfield owner Andrew Dahm has incorporated interior stiffeners to minimize warping of the car sides. The remaining details will be installed over the next few days. The K brake system is next, then the running board and related details before the underframe is glued to the car body. At this point, I’ve spent nearly five hours prepping and installing parts as this kit proceeds. I’ll post a full summary soon with details on how long I’ve spent on each step.

– Eric

What’s on your workbench?