MR’s own Turtle Creek Central (Microscale, Athearn):
St. Johnsbury and Lamoille Country (Herald King, Atlas TM):
Berlin Mills and Clarendon & Pittsford (Herald King, Atlas TM):
Currently awaiting procurement of suitable undec cars are Bay Colony, Green Mountain Ry, St. Lawrence & Atlantic, Vermont Ry (SSI scheme), and Virginia Central.
Nick, I hope you are not holding your breath for suitable undecorated cars to appear. The trend seems to be eliminating undecs, because “they do not sell well”[:(!] [U]. Better to buy the cars you want in factory paint, and strip the paint. I have done that with 2 cars a couple of days ago. [<:o)] If I had waited for undecs, the projects would have never have gone ahead. [banghead] [banghead] [banghead]
Reputedly, the B&HS had so many per diem cars that it didn’t have enough track capacity to store them all. As for the McCloud River, I remember driving along past, literally, miles of per-diem boxcars parked on an unused length of main track. That was in the mid-1980s, just after the per-diem car balloon popped.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - where per-diem was never heard of)
The only problem with the Accurail cars are they are not correct for most IPD cars as they were built with Non-Terminating Ends while the Accurail car is a transition era Exterior Post car with Terminating Ends.
Some of the cars from ExactRail, Intermountain, Branchline (Now Atlas) and Athearn are better representations of the cars that the IPD makers used. Also used were the old Athearn Railbox car but it is an ACF Plate B car so the decals are a little large for the car sides. The proper car for most of the IPC cars is the old MDC FMC Exterior Post car, unfortunately it is about 1’ too wide due to a mistake by the mold maker.
So, is it forever 1979 on your layout, or will you begin adding patched-out reporting marks to those (erstwhile) Short Line IPD boxcars (hey, Cody showed how to do it on last week’s Office episode)
Atlas and Branchline Trains are also making Shortline IPD cars. I just take the Railbox cars, remove the lettering, and put my private name lettering on them.
So far my custom efforts are centered on New England cars. I do however have factory painted cars from across the country, and I am always on the look out for more.
I use mostly Accurail cars, because the are reasonably priced and made in America. I’ll also use Athearn BB or MDC kits if I can get a good deal on them. The Exact Rail, Intermountain, etc cars normally far exceed my budget.
