New York Central Lines automobile box cars

Harold Oakhill sent a freight car update recently. He models the Ulster & Delaware Railroad in 1924, just before it was absorbed into the New York Central. Here are Harold’s latest freight car additions.

I just finished the final weathering of four New York Central and Michigan Central 40-foot automobile box cars (XA) of 1916 vintage. In addition to reflecting vintage prototypes, these are vintage resin freight car kits originally produced by Dennis Storzek in the 1980s.

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UTLX Class X-3 10K gallon tank car

Eric Hansmann picked up a Resin Car Works HO scale UTLX tank car kit at RPM Chicagoland and built it to kick off a new year. Here are his notes.

I decided to push my kit building skills forward by building my first resin tank car kit. After building several box cars, gondolas, and flat cars, I thought a tank car should be added to my 1926 fleet. The image above illustrates the main kit components, including the decals along the right side of the photo.

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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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January 2017 Virtual RPM

The model display room at the 2015 RPM-East event.

We issued a call for images of your latest modeling a couple of weeks ago. Prototype Rails at Cocoa Beach was about to get underway and we thought it would be fun to coordinate a Virtual RPM here on the blog for those who were unable to attend The Beach. The response was strong and we hope to do this again in a few months. The presentation may not be as impressive as entering a display room filled with railroad models, but it’s a great way to share and inspire others to move a project forward. Click on any image here to review a larger size.

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