What is the prototype for this car? It has wood ends and a steel floor and presumably steel sides. This seems like an unlikely combination. I’ve seen steel ends and wood sides, but not the other way around.
There isn’t one. The base model is kinda-sorta a really bad representation of a 1901 Pressed Steel Car Co. fishbelly side sill boxcar (like the 35,000 PRR XL boxcars), but the side details of the sills are all wrong. The ends are OK-ish, if toy train like, but the sides never existed in the real world (besides two DT&I MOW cars that were plywood over the original T&G siding). The roof is a travesty.
Your best bet is to stay away from these cars and buy one of the many accurate Westerfield kits for similar cars.
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The box cars that @orsonroy mentioned may be the following ones listed in the 1903 edition of the Car Builder’s Dictionary.
On the other hand, I think that among the MDC models, the overall proportions are better than the high-waisted truss rod cars. I have built several fantasy models, and the method is standardized.
Page 71 of the July 1972 issue of MR magazine
Page 61 of the 1974 catalog of MDC/Roundhouse (HOSeeker.net)
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Thanks, guys. I have two of these kits as part of a 3in1, and trying to figure out what to do with them.