Wednesday 4 April 2012

American Freight Cars 3: Further Additions

Another batch of new cars through the company photography shops. I will of course refer you all back to the a previous post on the roster I'm trying to build.



So no prizes for guessing that I need lots of Milwaukee cars for the layout. They pretty much represent my home road by proxy, or at least according to the numbers I counted when looking at pictures of North Shore Line freight trains. So this is the second of thirteen Milwaukee freight cars I need, joining my ExactRail horizontal rib box car.



I was lucky to get these two Kadee hoppers from Amherst Depot, as they are out of production. Good service from them too. Four down, only another nine Milwaukee freight cars to get.


Next up on my list of needs are lots of NYC freight cars, which is nice, because the NYC was the first railroad I ever chose to model. Got to love those Hudsons, Mohawks & Niagaras.  Here though is another Kadee coal hopper to join my NYC PS-1 box car I already have.



This is Broadway Limited model of the NYC 486 series steel box cars with 7/8 corrugated ends in post 55 Gothic livery. A signature car and loads were made. It has distinctive end grabs rather than a ladder for accessing the running boards. Trucks look nice, but have a unique way of fixing to the underframe, which is going to make replacing them slightly onerous.



An InterMountain 1937 10 panel AAR box car in the NYC pre-55 livery. So now I only need another six NYC cars for the roster.


The B&O was one of the top six or so class one railroads in the period I am modelling. So I need four cars. This Tichy USRA 2-Bay hopper joins my ExactRail M-53 Wagontop boxcar to bring me up to half the number of B&O cars I need.

This model was a bit lighter than its sister below. This turned out to be due to an assembly error at the factory that had led to one of the weight being missing. After using liquid lead it now weighs a fraction more than its sister.


This IC car is another Tichy USRA 2-Bay hopper from InterMountain, and it is the first of four IC railroad freight cars I need.


This is an Atlas 1932 ARA box car. Doesn't really fit the roster, but I just liked the look of it, and I desperately needed to and some variety to my collection of post war PS-1 box cars. Interesting Dalhman trucks too.



This is the only D&H freight car I need for the layout. The Kadee PS-3 hoppers are very sharp models, but are a bit light without the coal load that Kadee use to bring the weight up to NMRA standards.


Another Kadee hopper car. I need four GM&O freight cars, one of which needs to be a hopper. Nice model, but I don't like the way Kadee have done the weights, and the loads are a bit sub-standard for my tastes, and I will use real coal glued on top to improve the look.


An InterMountain 1937 10 panel AAR box car in NP livery. Not on the roster, but I found a couple of shots where once you knew what you were looking at, it was obvious that it was a NP box car, so I had to have a freight car in this livery.

I guess I need to revise my roster numbers now I'm better able to identify freight cars from fuzzy photographs based on the knowledge of the liveries I've been researching?


This is a rather sharp Atlas 70 ton Hart ballast hopper. I'd like to get another in Milwaukee livery, but guess what? They are out of production at this time. Anyway, I need four CB&Q freight cars, so this is the first of them. I suspect that the livery on this car is too modern for my 1959 layout. No doubt someone will tell me at some point.
 

4 comments:

  1. Ashley,

    You have a nice selection of freight cars. I have some of the same projects as well. I have have some in-service prototype photos - if you're interested drop me an eMail and I'll send them along.

    Regards,

    Charles Hostetler

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    1. Yes please, very much so. Expect an incoming email.

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  2. I've just aquired a 4-pack of the plain brown BLI NYC boxcars and agree they are very nicely done models. Compared to the Westerfield resin ones I've built, they are a good match. The only gripe I have is with the opening door being too thick. I might have to take one apart to see if I can thin the door mouldings down and fix them in place. Failing which, I'll need to raid my ever-expanding spares box to see if I have any suitable (and thinner!) doors. I need to swap out the metal running boards for wooden ones (again, ex spared box - thank heavens that many of the resin manufacturers tend to supply multiples!) on 2 out of my 4 to more accurately reflect my era.

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    1. I would like another, or two, but Broadway Limited appear to only sell in multi-packs, and it is a matter of finding a dealer who has split one.

      I would like a couple of their H2a hoppers for instance, but don't need three in each road name that they supply.

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