Walthers Proto has two current 50’ offest box cars, 920-102007 and 008. Can someone tell me what the “built date” is in their out-of-the box lettering?
John
According to the Walthers info, the cars were in-service from 1942 to 1975. While the BLT. date isn’t legible in the photo, one might assume it to be sometime in 1942.
The reweigh date is semi-legible, at least on my screen, and appears to be 5-55 or 5-56, so these cars, as-is, would be suitable for any time from the re-weigh dates to anytime within 48 months following them.
If you’re modelling a later date, you should change the reweigh date to reflect that time period.
For an earlier time period, the reweigh date would instead read “NEW”, followed by the same date as the BLT date. After the car had been in service for 30 months, the car would have be re-weighed, and the stencilling by the weight data would reflect that, with “NEW” and the date being painted-over and re-stencilled with the initials of a scale station, plus the date when the re-weighing was done. In 1948, the interval between re-weighings changed to 48 months, and you’d need to calculate appropriately for a suitable date.
Of course, this may be more information than you wanted to hear, and you may prefer to use a slightly heavy hand when applying weathering. [swg]
Here’s an old Athearn BlueBox car, re-worked to represent an Espee A-50-14 automobile car, built in October of 1936. According to the stencilling, it was re-weighed at Sacramento in April of 1939
Another Athearn car, this one shows more clearly t
Doctor,
Very helpful. Nice stuff,too, in the photos. Thanks!