Need help to locate manufacturers of Pre WWII box car kits, ala Red Cabose & Intermountain. I know Branchline makes nice kits, but no box cars in my years. I could rant and rave about the wonderful worlds of outsourcing, but that would be counter productive.+@#@@* I guess I am one of the shrinking pool of people who dervie fun from building their rolling stock.
Check out Westerfield, Sunshine Models, Fand C kits, Speedwitch Models, they’re all resin kits, you can’t more kit than those. mike h.
I’ve picked up several of the Mather Box Car kits from Walthers/Proto:
These are called “Time-Saver” kits. They are well-detailed, but most of the pain-in-the-butt stuff like grab-ons are already assembled. This particular one was my first, and it probably took no more than an hour to put together. The only tricky part is the brake stuff on the end. This one is shown without any additional painting or weathering - I just took it out of the box and put it together.
They also come RTR, for those that are interested. Unfortunately, these seem to be very limited runs. The kits are going for $16.95. I just picked up a couple of stock cars this week. Watch your Walthers fliers.
Accurail has lots of very simple kits for pre-war boxcars.
Walthers (former Proto1000) offers 36’ Fowler boxcars, although they’re not available as kits. Mine have been modified.
Walthers also has the former Train Miniature kits for boxcars, which, with a little kitbashing, can be built into useable models of that era.
Here’s a Red Caboose X-29 - not a lot of difference from the Walthers car shown above.
While not currently in production, you may be able to find a few of these Walthers 50’ cars:
Tichy makes a very nice kit for the USRA singlesheathed boxcar (don’t yet have a photo of this one), and they also offer the same car as it was later rebuilt, with steel sides:
Or, you could always scratchbuild a few, too:
If you’re interested in the resin kits mentioned earlier, check out Ted Culotta’s ongoing series “Essential Freight Cars”, in Railroad Model Craftsman. Very informative regarding prototypes, and excellent modelling.
Wayne
I like Westerfield and Funaro resin kits myself
Tichy also do a nice single sheath boxcar.
You do have to paint and letter these yourself and provide trucks for the resin kits.
Jon
What year did they move the hand brake wheel from the roof to the vertical end of the car?
Westinghouse introduced the AB brake system in 1933, so I would guess that the “power” brake wheel was introduced at about the same time. Many cars with the vertical brake staff kept them until scrapping - some with the original “K” brakes, and others updated with “AB” brakes. I believe that there were also some cars that retained their “K”-type brakes but received the power brake wheel. “K” brakes for interchange service were outlawed in 1945, but this was later extended until 1953. AB brakes were mandatory on all cars built or rebuilt after Sept. 1, 1933.
Jon, nice looking cars.
Wayne
Thank you for your input about Pre WW11. I really apreciate it. I will be looking at alll your suggestions.
Wayne,
do you have a web site? I would like to see more pictures of your layout.
Thanks for asking, Reinhard. I don’t have a website, but here’s a link to a thread that contains links to all sorts of photos of my layout.
I hope that you’re not on dial-up if you go to take a look. [swg]
Wayne
Thank you!
I’ve a 16Mb line and I take a very big look;-)
Have been wanting the mather boxcars for some time but being a bottom feeder they have been way to expencive ( I ussually buy my proto 2000 stuff rtr for under $10.00). So for the ? , what all do you have to do for the time savers, tryed the kits but way back but couldn’t deal with the plastc grabs.
That’s why I’m so happy with these kits. The grab-ons are metal, but they put them on at the factory, so there’s no drilling, bending or gluing for these tiny pieces. These kits give a far superior result than any of the Blue Boxes, but at about half the cost of todays RTR’s. Likewise, the undercarriage stuff is all pre-built for you.
I too am a bottom feeder, but there’s only so much I can do with a $6 kit, and it’s never going to come up to WPF standards. So, these kits are a happy compromise.
Mister B, are you sure that the grabirons are metal? I agree that those plastic ones are a pain in the caboose to install, all the more unsatisfying because they’re grossly over-size. My Proto1000 Fowler cars were originally sold as r-t-r cars (for about $40.00), although I got mine as body shells only, at about two bucks a whack. These had all of the grabirons installed, although all were plastic and about twice the scale diameter of the prototype. I removed them, plugged the holes, then installed metal ones, which all had to be bent from wire due to being a non-standard width. I think the the results were worth the effort, though.
While these cars are a must for anyone modelling Canadian roads, and are perfect for my era (1930s), there was no way that I would’ve paid that kind of money for the cars as offered. In fact, I would’ve preferred them with cast-on grabs, as shaving them off would’ve been easier than removing the over-sized ones and filling the holes in order to redrill at the proper size. Probably cheaper to make, too. A few of the Mather cars showed up at the LHS, but as I recall, the price was in the mid-to-high $20s, for a kit.
Wayne
Wayne, Mr B, is correct - the grabirons on the Mather boxcars are metal. I just went and checked mine to be sure.
Cheers,
Mark.
Thanks, just can’t stop buying trains but need that bargin, will start looking for the time saver kits!