I believe I read somewhere that in the days when virtually all HO stuff had to be
scratchbuilt, some guys would build box cars out of card stock. I was lookiing
through old magazines lately and found an old NMRA bulletin with a centerfold of
box car sides in various scales. I scanned & printed the HO versions and I’m
in the process of building a couple of box cars.
So, does anybody know where to download other similar things? I found some
sides from another NMRA bulletin on the net, some reefer sides for a beer called
“Old Frothingslosh” , but without the ends of the cars.
By the way, “Old Frothingslosh” sounds interesting. They claim it had the foam
on the bottom of the glass.[:O][:O]
Card stock sides were very popular in the early days of the hobby. NMRA printed some in the late 70’s as a nostalgia item. I used them to make a couple of cars. Card stock structures were also very popular and represented an in expensive option for people without a lot of money. There was at least one modeler who scratch built steam locomotives with card stock super structures.
Ah, yes, Old Frothingslosh, the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom.
This was a “joke beer” brewed in the 60’s and 70’s. It was actually just a re-labelling of another beer. Utica Club comes to mind, but I didn’t research it. They would put out the Old Frothingslosh cans for a month or two every year. Seems to me they adorned it with pictures of less-than-attractive barmaids, too.
I built the Frothinslash car in Ho from the Bulletin I took a Round House Old time reefer sanded details off sides and glued to card stock to car also they had a Bulletin car that I did the same with…Cox 47
Model Railroader printed some cardstock sides back in the 1930s or 40s – there were also commercial kits that used card sides.
The last commercial paper/card car that I recall was a reissue of an old O scale gondola around 1965 or so. I no longer recall the make.
I have three card sided cars, all reefers. Some have the wood siding embossed in the paper, other just print it. The printed one looks best oddly enough. I suspect it dates from circa 1940. None of these cars show any warping - the quality of paper used was high. Some guys tried to use shirt cardboard to make cars or buildings but that stuff just wicked up moisture and cut with ragged edges. My own experiments with shirt cardboard in the 1960s were not a success although if you sealed the cardstock it held up fairly well (I used the sealer that was used to protect Polaroid photos – back then you’d get a new supply with each roll of Polaroid film and there was always plenty left after all the pics were taken. It was a foul smelling enamel or lacquer of some kind).
I have seen photos of Japanese models, where using paper is or was fairly common. The quality was unbelievable.
Dave Nelson
Paper (card stock) sided cars were the norm back in the 1930’s and up until the mid 1950’s. Quite a number of companies produced them as standard kits of the day, perhaps the best known being Red Ball. However, RMC, MR, and the NMRA have also printed them in their magazines mainly pre-1955 (I have a collection of MR’s and Red Ball did the very first magzine example in MR for a Chirstmas issue about 1940). It’s best to get either the original old kits at train shows or copies of the magazine examples as they provide all the sides/ends/roof designs and the magazine examples tell you which company’s car bodies are the best fit to the sides/ends (they were most definitely not all “standard” 40-footers).
Now, this Old Frothingslo***hing is much more interesting. I googled a bit, and discovered that it’s actually Iron City beer. But the curious thing is the creator of Old Frothingslosh, Pittsburgh radio personality and model railroader Rege Cordic. Here’s a web page about his creations, including some cars he made himself.
There are several websites which give additional information on Olde Frothingslosh and its originator Rege Cordic. Don’t miss some of the audio clips from his radio programs!!! They’re priceless.
I don’t know about downloading but you may be able to pick up some old kits… Laconia is one that comes to mind… I use to have several kits that had the cardboard sides bound into the box lids… Kind of neat stuff to have but I never built any and dumped all of them on ebay years ago…
Forgetting the beer aspect of the discussion for the moment, how many remember Picard cars? They were all wood kits, a simple floor, ends, roof, and sides, scribed wood for the ends and sides and fit together sort of like a puzzle. They date from the same era as cardstock sides.
The builder would have to supply all the details – by which I mean frame, bolsters, roof ribs, doors, handgrabs and ladders, brake stuff, couplers, trucks, etc but the basic outline of an all wood box car or reefer was supplied, unpainted, and took maybe 20 seconds to put together.
Dave Nelson