I’ currently doing my car inventory… I digged up this strange looking Maine Central boxcar that I found out at a flea market 4 years ago. It’s 40’ long, but the roof line is ver low.
Any idea about the manufacturer of this model? Roller bearing truck too???
And the time frame this kind of car was in revenue service? (I’d like to add it to my late 50’s layout roster, but I guess it’s pushing my luck too far…)
Thanks for any useful info.
Matt
The paperwork in the box looks like a Walthers logo; could you photograph the bottom of the car? There are usually some telltale indicators there that confirm the manufacturer.
The car is too late to be a 50s box. It has no roofwalk and not many 50s boxes had plug doors. Look at the fine print on the car for BLT date - probably from the 60s or later.
It looks like an old Trains-Miniature/Walthers insulated box car. Note there are no ice hatches.
Jim
The car came into a Walthers box, but its not the original one. Trucks have real springs and details you wouldn’t find on Walthers cars. No building date…
@ Jim. True, proportions are similar to a 40’ steel reefer without hatches. Train Miniature could be effectively a good hypothesis. I’ll make take a look online. I guess it could be an early 1960’s car.
Matt
The sprung trucks have me thinking Athearn or Walthers. The Athearn sprung trucks were metal and all the Walthers sprung trucks I’ve seen are plastic.
Jeffrey, they are plastic, so it would likely be a Walthers.
Matt
I’ve just found a Red Caboose MEC boxcar that shows stricking similarities with this car. It’s a 40’ boxcar also with a low roofline. No plugdoor though. Was it common for MEC to have such low roof line cars?
Matt
Looks like Train-Miniature to me, or perhaps one of the Walthers re-issues of TM, like the X29 car I have - although the Walthers re-issue does not have sprung trucks. Neither does a genuine TM hopper kit I have - in the plastic box. Regular old solid plastic trucks, no springs.
–Randy
Trains-Miniature cars came out around 1968. They had sprung plastic trucks with plastic wheel sets. The frustrating part of these kits was that the plastic wheel sets were molded with the fill gate right on the wheel flange! Lots of filing to get a smooth edge. I usually just replaced the wheels with Kadee wheels back in the early 70’s They later became Trains-Miniature of Illinois(in the plastic box), then they were purchased by Walthers. The original Walthers version had sprung trucks, but with a brass axle with plastic wheels. They later went to a solid plastic truck. Walthers dropped the line in later years, but did re-issue the single sheath boxcar with ‘grain’ doors a number of years ago.
Trains-Miniature cars really have no specific prototype - They mixed roofs/ends on several of their cars. I have that car in MILW - they were used for canned goods. They just needed insulated cars for this service.
Jim
I am going to guess that this was one of a series of freight cars produced by Walthers in the mid to late 1980s, using tooling acquired from Train Miniature of Illinois. The trucks appear to be plastic sprung trucks being sold by Walthers at the time, and typically included with this line of kits. The Walthers catalog number for the Maine Central car was 932-3223. The plug-door boxcars were first listed in the 1986 Walthers HO catalog.
I was in HO in those days, and I purchased a few kits from this line.
The trucks are the same ones i got with the Walthers 2 bay Airslide hoppers when they first came out,still have the trucks in a box because i changed them out because of derailments.
I think this info might help.
Train Miniature has this type of car listed in the 1980 Walthers Catalog. Although this road name is not listed. The numbers listed are 3300 to 3312 with 3319 and 3320 being new for 1980. These are Data Only cars that are painted reefer orange and reefer yellow.
These cars are listed as a 40’ Plug Door Reefer at $3.75 each. It goes on to say that a major design change for the standard steel reefer was the sliding flush door (“Plug Door”) in 1951. A new safety feature was the Blaw-Knox type roof walk.
Bill
Given the molded on ladders and blunt detail I think we can rule out Red Caboose. Might it be Train Miniature’s plug door boxcar model, which did in fact come painted Maine Central (3223) according to the list on HO Seeker?
http://www.hoseeker.net/TrainMiniatureslist/tmlist1981pg2.jpg
Train Miniature trucks and wheels did indeed have their problems which is why some fellows just replaced the entire truck not just the wheels. I suspect many surviving TM cars have after market trucks on them.
OT – oddly the Train Miniature wheels were the only 33" wheels I ever found that actually worked in the old AHM freight car trucks – so I never threw my TM wheels out I just saved them for the next project of converting an AHM car to Kadees. Whether preserving the AHM trucks was a wise move is a story for another day.
Dave Nelson
Matt, your car is from Train Miniature, or its later incarnation, Train Miniature of Illinois, or the current owner of the dies, Walthers.
It’s the “boxcar” version of their reefer:
Most of the TM house cars had the low roof line of mid-'20s boxcars, and make an interesting addition to any train up to the late '50s. While plug doors were just starting to become popular in the late '50s, they were introduced much earlier, in the 1920s, if I recall correctly. As far as I know, though, that TM boxcar follows no known prototype. It is, however, a good starting point for for cars from the '20s through '50s, such as this doubledoor boxcar:
…or these door-and-a-half cars:
For the cars shown above, use a #17 chisel blade in your X-Acto to shave off the door actuating detail and the tackboards, then lengthen the door tracks and cement the doors to the car’s sides.
You can also make a simple rebuilt version of the cars shown above, as many roads removed the auxiliary doors, plating-over part of the opening and replacing the original main doors with wider ones. I left the tack boards in place, although they’d be better removed.
Wayne
Thanks for the interesting reply everybody. I only knew TM from its billboard reefers ads in MR back in the 60’s and 70’s.
I’ve found a Walthers stock car which use exactly the same brown plastic underframe. I guess my model is from the TM dies but reissued by Walthers.
I really should have got all the 4 cars that were on sale in the bargain bin of this seller 4 years ago (shame on me!!!). At least, this one will make the official layout car roster.
Matt
Matt, TM made stock cars, too:
Wayne