Hi, I am planning on modeling a late 40’s to early 60’s layout and would like some recommendations on brands of boxcars with good detailing for hauling grain. HO scale
Hi and thanks for all the suggestions, time to hit my local hobby shops to do some shopping. Boxcars are on my brain right now.
You didn’t mention the scale you plan to model, but if it’s N scale I’d say Micro-Trains provides the best detail, but they don’t do multiple car numbers per railroad. Atlas is always a safe bet. I’d stay away from Con-Cor, Model Power and Life-Like. Again, I speak of N scale only here.
Accurail kits is just one that comes to mind.I’ve built quite a few of them.
Athearn Blue Box kits are good also .
Browse Ebay, sometimes you’ll find some of them for sale there at a decent price.
I don’t know if you’re interested in ready to roll kits or not, Walthers has some, but they are usually a bit costly in price.
TheK4Kid
Are you looking for kits or RTR?
Decent: Athearn “Blue Box”
Good: Accurail, Athearn Genesis, Atlas Trainman, Proto 1000, Branchline “Yardmaster”, Walthers
VG: Atlas, Kadee, Proto 2000, Red Caboose, Intermountain, Branchline “Blueprint”, Broadway Limited, Bowser, Tichy
Excellent: Funaro & Camerlengo, Westerville (both resin)
Accurail and Branchline will have the majority of the boxcars. I think the 6-panel wood boxcars by Accurail are exceptional.
Hope that helps…
Tom
When hauling grain, a boxcar in transit looks like any other boxcar - no special detailing needed. If you plan on putting grain doors in the cars, you’ll need a brand with opening doors so you can see the grain doors (otherwise what’s the point?). I’d recommend either the old Train Miniature cars, or Athearn Blue Box. Intermountain cars chave excellent detail, and can be modeled with the doors open, to display the grain doos and the load (if any). You can’t close the doors if you model them open though, since they’re glued in place. Accurail cars are great cars, but have no provision for opening the doors.
Remember, though, if you’re hauling them in a train, they look just like any other boxcars. The only giveaway from trackside is that they usually traveled in long blocks, or in unit trains.
When I was a kid in the mid Fifties, I lived across a cornfield from the Burlington’s mainline west out of Chicago, and every harvest season I’d see these long trains of boxcars heading east into Chicago, usually headed by one of Burlington’s great O-5 Northerns (they kept a sring of them in Galesburg for use during the harvest season).
Very few of the Athearn Genesis boxcars would be appropriate for his layout. Almost all have low brake wheels and no roofwalks, which did not start to happen until the mid 1960s. The only boxcars I found that did have roofwalks and high brake wheels are some of the 60’, Pullman Standard auto parts boxcars, which would not haul grain. These would only be appropriate for the very end of his layout’s era.
This is one of the P2K Mather Box Car kits. They were a limited production run. Walthers may still have some of them. At first, they were $17 for the kit, but when they were trying to clean out the inventory I got several of them for $8. I really like the detail level on these. The grab-ons, by the way, are factory-attached. They call this a Time-Saver kit. It really can be built in an evening. This one is just assembled straight out of the box, no painting or weathering. On later ones, I’ve weathered them a bit before assembly, so they take a bit longer.
In kit form, you can position the doors however you’d like. The high brake wheels and roofwalks on these put them in the pre-World-War-II era.
I just checked Walthers. The remaining kits are $11.98, and the RTR ones are $16.98 or $12.98. Available in several road names and numbers. (Weird. The Illinois Northern RTR model comes in 2 road numbers. One is $12.98, the other is $16.98.)
Perhaps a few covered hoppers for grain would be appropriate for the late 50s early 60s timeframe as well.
Cars in grain service were often older but they needed to be sound so as to not leak grain. Temporary seals were needed in the doors. This was done with boards or with commercial grain doors made of wood or paper coming up about 3/4s of the door opening. The grain doors would be visible only immediately before and while loading and immediate before the actual unloading when the grain doors were removed (if wood) or destroyed (if paper). Box cars were used for hauling grain up through the 1970s with covered hoppers taking over the role. The first covered hoppers widely used in grain service were the three-bay PS-2 in the late 1950s.
So, models of most any general service, single-door, 40-foot, 50-ton wood-sided box car would be suitable up to the early 1950s and any steel-sided box car of that specification anytime in your late 1940s, early 1960s layout.
Mark
Just got the Feb MR. Look at page 100 - great pic of a grainloading box being unloaded!![8D]
Mark or someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I also think that some early cement hoppers were converted to grain service in the late 'fifties, early 'sixties. Bowser, Atlas and Kadee make some very nice models of these cars. Pricewise, I think the Bowser kits are a little less ‘pricey’ than the RTR Atlas and Kadee’s.
Tom [:)]
Probably not. Grain hoppers were very rare until the 1970’s when unit trains were established. Generally you wouldn’t mix them in a grain train since they unload differently (top vs. side0 and unload differently (bottom vs side).
Probably not. Cement hoppers had a very small cubic capacity since they were designed for hauling something very heavy. Grain is relatively light.
A cement hopper from the 50’s has a cubic footage of about 1900 cu ft or less. A 40 ft boxcar from the 1950’s has a cubic footage of 3500 cu ft. If you filled the cement covered hopper full you would have less grain and under load the hopper compared to the boxcar. A 50 ton boxcar was only filled about 2/3 full with grain, about 2000 cu ft. So a 1900 cu ft 70 ton covered hopper would only be able to carry about 50 tons of grain.
As others have mentioned, you need good 40’ boxcars for grain service. Contrary to some posts, only the best(clean class 1)boxcars will pass for grain loading. They had to have the following or would be refused for loading:
Clean interior
Good doors
No leaking floors
Not all of the above requirements were met, and as the ‘grain rush’ built, ‘leakers’ got into grain service. Most grain boxes ran with the sliding door closed and locked with a seal - you really did not see the grain doors unless they were being loaded/unloaded or were running empty back for loading. The 40’ box cars you did not see in grain service were usually the special loading equipped ones(DF for example). Preferred cars were ones with ‘narrow’ doors(6 ft sliders). Most grain door kits were sized for these dimensions.
Normally, one would load out a 40’ box car with about 2200-2500 cubic ft of grain. This works out to about 50-55 tons(the normal capacity of the car). Cement hoppers of the era were usually in the 2000 cubic ft capacity range(and a 70 ton capacity). Loading grain into one(even if it was cleaned out) would result with ‘cubing out’ before you reached the load capacity - not a good match. 70-75 ton capacity 3 bay covered hoppers were starting to show up in the late 50’s. These have the ‘cubes’ to match their 70-75 ton capacity. The problem with them was cost, and the elevators had to install a new loading tube sustem to load these cars. And as the covered hoppers got larger(100 ton capacity), many time the rail on the branches or the elevator siding could not support these big cars.
My 50’s era Milwaukee Road layout has a lot of 40’ box cars(to be expected). I have lots of Accurail, Rib-Side
A 50-ton capacity boxcar could easily contain its maximum load within its volume in grain service. Depending upon the type of grain, they were generally filled up to 75% by volume, so the grain would occupy about 2400 to 2600 cubic cubic feet. (Boxcars were so versatile, and were known to carry other loose, bulk goods such as cement, sugar, ore, sand, and coal.)
Early covered hoppers were designed for heavy materials such as cement and sand. Their 2000 cubic feet or less capacity was insufficient for a shipment of grain to approach their capacity limit of 70-tons.
Early covered hopper (starting from the 1950s) designed to carry grain were 2600 cubic feet or more so as to make better use of the cars’ weight capacity.
Mark
Edit - Jim slipped in his message while I composed mine. We’re saying the same thing… On the shelf near me are two models (Funaro, I think) of covered hoppers whose prototypes were built in the 1940s. One is lettered for the Pennsylvania railroad, has a 70-ton load limit and 1973 cubic feet of volume. It has three unloading bays and 10 square loading hatches. The other is lettered for the NYC, has a 70-ton load limit and 2000 cubic feet of volume. It has two unloading bays and eight square loading hatches, and is taller and shorter than the Pennsylvania car. Obviously, these weren’t constructed for grain service.
Hey thanks that will be the first page I turn to when mine gets to me, seems that they deliver by dog sled way up here
i remember over 40 years ago when the “Q” in E St Louis would pay a $5.00 cash bounty for empty box cars suitable for grain loading. as long as the holes could be plugged with an old burlap sack, they were ok. this was at the start of the nation wide box car shortage that precipitated RailBox and the short line equipment craze. (anybody remember LSBC?) if all their equipment ever came home it wouldn’t fit on their railroad.
of course it was probably a violation of federal law to divert cars in violation of the AAR car service rules but I’m sure the statute of limitations has run out by now. besides I have already spent my share of the money. come to think of it, the Burlington helped me buy my first brand new car.
grizlump
As mentioned, any 40’ boxcar, steel or wood, would be suitable. I see that you’re in Edmonton, so if you’re modelling a Canadian road, 36’ boxcars were common, too, well into the '60s on many of the lighter prairie branch lines.
The Tichy model of a re-built USRA single-sheathed boxcar can be built with working doors, if you want to model one with grain doors, but, as others have noted, they would’ve been indistinguishable from any other boxcar when running in a train. The grain doors are built from strip styrene, and are removeable, although I usually just close the door for other shipments. [swg]
The 36’ Fowler Patent car was very common, especially in Canada. LifeLike Canada (Proto1000) offered a fairly nice, although pricey, r-t-r version. CNR, CPR, TH&B, PGE, and NAR all owned them. Mine have been re-worked, including new lettering:
Wayne