Tag Archives: Resin kit builds

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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SLSF Single Sheathed boxcar Sunshine Model kit 65.3

Resin Freight Cars, Techniques, ,

slsf_146370_xm1

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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Wabash Automobile boxcars

Resin Freight Cars,
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Speedwitch Media Wabash Automobile boxcar.

Charlie Duckworth returns with comments on a pair of interesting resin kit builds.

History
The Wabash had a large fleet of single-sheathed automobile boxcars starting in the 1920’s and running these well into the 1950’s. The designs were basically standardized with radial roofs, wood or steel doors, and Murphy or Dreadnaught ends. These were tall cars having 10-foot high interiors. Wabash 46000-46999 had 5/5/5 Murphy ends. The 47000-47999 had 3/3/3 Dreadnaught ends. Another group numbered 17000-17299 had Dreadnaught automobile end doors. For prototype photos and additional history, consult page 80 in ‘Focus on Freight Cars Volume One: Single Sheathed Box & Automobile Cars’ by Richard Hendrickson.

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Storzek Soo Line boxcar converted to a NOT&M boxcar

Models, Resin Freight Cars, ,

notm_xm_action_web

Charlie Duckworth returns with another interesting build summery.

History
In 1921, American Car & Foundry (AC&F) built 500 single sheathed boxcars for the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railroad. These cars had peaked roofs and wood ends with steel bracing. The Missouri Pacific added these cars to their boxcar fleet when they acquired the Gulf Coast Lines railroads in January 1925. The cars were repainted into the parent company’s standard with the revised ‘Mopac buzz saw’ (the revision being the addition of ‘Lines’ to the logo) now appearing on the sides of the newly acquired GCL and I-GN equipment for the first time.

Although the cars only had 8-foot high interiors, they lasted quite a long time with 451 still on the roster in 1948. Due to a shortage of cabooses on the Mopac during WW2, 90 of these boxcars were converted to war emergency cabooses with personnel doors and windows added to the carbody. After the war, many of these cabooses were transferred to maintenance of way service.

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