If it’s too old for your era, I’ve seen a box car next to an old building on an abandoned siding with trees growing up all around it. A couple hours of chainsaw work to get it out. Could be storage for the buildings owner or could just be there. (I’d put the plastic wheels back on it to save a few $'s, Kadees make it look right.)
Driving around rural Illinois, in and around the Galesburg area, it is striking how many old wood boxcars you see on farms. Some single sheathed (a/k/a outside braced) but many double sheathed.
Well, they did have knuckle couplers and air brakes in that time period, but they weren’t produced by Kadee.
Werean MDC car available to me, such as one of these…
…I’d modify it into a pretty-accurate model of a Southern Su Class boxcar, as shown here…
I had another couple of MDC oldtime boxcars, and made them into MoW service cars…
However, the MDC cars are not too old for your planned layout’s era, while my three modified versions are too modern. Southern’s Su class cars were built between 1922-26, while my MoW cars would have been done in the early-to-mid-'30s.
If I had one of those boxcars I would heavily weather it and do a patching with black paint, China Railway decals and reporting marks.
The information is spotty, but the Japanese-controlled South Manachuria Railway had wooden boxcars in service that may have survived until the end of WW2 which were presumably incorporated into the China Railway freight car fleet after.
A car with trussrods and archbar trucks would have banned from interchange service by the end of the 1930’s, but some railroads (the DM&IR for example) kept cars like that for online-only service into the 1950s.
MDC also made a 36’ steel boxcar with a steel underframe. If you can find one of them, you can replace the wood/trussrod underframe with the steel one, and use more modern trucks to replace the archbars.
Or you could just not install the trussrods and keep the original underframe. I know it wouldn’t be right, but installing bettendorf trucks would give it the correct on the rails look.
The 36’ steel MDC car has a small fishbelly frame.
Many years ago when I did the MDC cars I used Kadee old time couplers. The #5 reminded me of a little boys wearing his father’s shoes. Saw that once in a message here. Sorry.
Kadee has a smaller coupler. A #58 I think. You would have to check. It has been a few years since I bought one for a 36 foot kit wood box car no longer produced.
I think I had a few shorter cars and a kit built photographer’s car I still have
I thought that I had read that in one of your first posts since returning, but just spent 10 minutes sifting through the sub-forums in search of that post.
The MDC car is very suitable for the era you wish to model, especially with the truss-rod underframe.
Tichy offers a plastic kit for a wooden ore hopperthat would probably be era-appropriate, too.
Most freight cars in that period would be of wood construction, and mostly 36’ long, or less. Many would have truss rod underframes, too.
Model Die Casting also offers some shorty passenger cars that would be appropriate too. I use mine as MoW crew and work cars on my late '30s-era layout.
This is the combine, with a couple of Tichy windows added to the original baggage section…
…this one was originally a postal car, but I’ve blanked-off some of the windows to better-suit it to MoW duties…
This one is the coach version (it can be had with the duckbill roof, as-shown, or with a regular clerestory roof, as seen on the other two cars).
I blanked over a couple of windows, but it’s otherwise pretty-much stock…
Another MDC car that may be useful for your layout would be the 36’ truss rod reefer…
