Probably been covered before and I can't find it, but here goes: Are there any prototypes that had the same kind of roof as the Athearn BB 40' steel boxcars? I have a small fleet (5) of them that I received from an older gentleman who modeled GN that could no longer do it. (I've put about 10 or so pieces of rolling stock from that collection in my own stock.) I'm planning to add cars for a sugar plant to add interest to my railyard and given the additional numbers of cars I think I need, I'd like to use them if I can, being free and all. However, the road number that is on them isn't accurate so I would need to either renumber or repaint them anyway. The prototype railroad that I know (NP) didn't have that style of roof to the best of my knowledge. The era I'm looking at is just after the BN merger. (I'm not worried about the saw tooth sill. I've corrected that on enough cars that it isn't that hard.)
As usual, any help that can be provided would be most welcomed.
It's a bog standard rectangular panel roof. Oodles of cars have that...
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
If I remember correctly, the Athearn cars aren't really prototypical. I remember reading that there was no combination of sides, ends and roof on an actual boxcar. Plus the underframe is backwards, the desingers thought the brake diagram was from the bottom looking up and it was from the top looking down, so its a mirror image.
On the bright side they are cheap, easy to put together and still fairly common. In the middle of a train they are JAFC, just another freindly car.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Quick answer: The Athearn 40' BB boxcar is very closely modeled after the 1937 steel boxcar, such as Santa Fe's Bx-37 and Southern Pacific's B-50-18 classes.
The old Athearn 40' Box is a 1937AAR Mod Boxcar Plan, the Mod means that instead of a 10' inside height it has a 10' 4" or 10' 6" inside height. A number of other things about the car limit it to being the prototype for IC and DSSA boxcars.
The bad thing about the car is IRV used the end of the car for his more modern cars like instead of the proper dreadnought and dartnot ends they should have had.
Rick Jesionowski
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
Rule 2: I make the rules.
Rule 3: Illuminating discussion of prototype history, equipment and operating practices is always welcome, but in the event of visitor-perceived anacronisms, detail descrepancies or operating errors, consult RULE 1!
dti406 The old Athearn 40' Box is a 1937AAR Mod Boxcar Plan, the Mod means that instead of a 10' inside height it has a 10' 4" or 10' 6" inside height. A number of other things about the car limit it to being the prototype for IC and DSSA boxcars. The bad thing about the car is IRV used the end of the car for his more modern cars like instead of the proper dreadnought and dartnot ends they should have had. Rick Jesionowski
Or they just botched the dimensions. Wouldn't be the only thing out there with dimensional errors, and it's not exactly a fine scale models.
(Those door claws are just unacceptable against any modern model standard IMHO. But if you're able to pick them up cheap at swap meets, that's an advantage. I certainly wouldn't pay Athearn RTR prices for this junk though.)
FRRYKid...The prototype railroad that I know (NP) didn't have that style of roof to the best of my knowledge....
If you think the roof to be incorrect, it shouldn't be too hard to remove, as long as you have a suitable replacement available.
I rebuilt eight Athearn Blue Box boxcars into my freelanced road's "first" steel boxcars, removing and replacing the cars' roof, ends, underframe, doors, and details, and also lowering the cars' height.
Here's one of them...
...and a LINK that covers the entire re-build...probably more than you need (or want).
If you know how the roof should look, you may be able to sand-off the incorrect portions of the roof and replace them with some available (or self-created) replacements.
I don't know what kind of roof you need, but Red Caboose/Intermountain offered flat, rivetted roofs, like those used on Pennsy's X-29 boxcars, and Viking roofs are available from Des Plaines Hobbies.
It's not all that difficult to scratchbuild roofs either, using sheet and strip styrene and styrene shapes.
I didn't care for the old-style plank roofs on Accurail's Fowler boxcars...
...so re-sheathed them with styrene to represent an outside metal-sheathed type roof (sheet metal secured with metal-sheathed battens...
Another option, if you can't find or build a new roof, is to strip and re-paint and re-letter the car for another railroad...no point in otherwise wasting a gift.
Wayne
With a bit of further research, I think I have found a prototype series of cars that look fairly close to the Athearn car: FWD 8001-8500. (For those that don't know, FWD was a Texas-based subsidiary of the CB&Q.) For some of the cars, depending on the number, I will have to change out the doors. I'm working in a few different places to find out the width of said doors.
dehusman In the middle of a train they are JAFC, just another friendly car.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
The width of the door opening on FWD 8001-8500 was an even six feet, just like the Athearn BB car.
cv_acr...Those door claws are just unacceptable against any modern model standard IMHO...
I agree...not only do they detract from the car's attempt to look reasonably prototypical, they compound that by the fact that the bottom edges of those "working" doors are too high.Most of my Athearn boxcars have non-working doors. I remove the upper door guides, which are oversize, and fill the channel where they were located using strip styrene. I then add a slimmer piece of strip styrene to represent the new (non-working) door guide.Next, I use a chisel-type blade in my X-Acto to remove the bottom door guides, which are postioned too high. (It's best to leave the car's floor in-place while doing this, as otherwise, it's very easy to break the side-sills.)I then add suitably-sized strip styrene to represent the bottom door tracks.
The final step is to cut off those "claws", then segment the doors to make them the proper new height. I do this by slicing-up spare Athearn doors, either left-over from other kits or projects, or, when they were still around, purchased from the odds and ends often available at most hobbyshops or train shows.
Here's a modified Athearn Blue Box boxcar, with non-working doors, likely from McKean or Front Range...
Bowser and Tichy both offer proper height ready-to-use doors, too.
If you want to have a few (or even all) of your Athearn boxcars with working doors, you could use strip styrene to create interior door guides, much the same as those formerly offered by Front Range and McKean.
I did so on a few Walthers 50' doubledoor boxcars, as shown below...
This Athearn automobile car was re-built to better match a photo of the real car...
I cut-off the tabs on the sidesills, and replaced them with continuous ones, and added the underfloor storage pipes for the tie-down chains. The doors are from Athearn, segmented and re-cemented together to get the proper height...they are non-working.
FRRYKid,
Since you seem to have an interest in prototypical accuracy, the Athearn car, as has been noted, has some detail differences that could rule out the FW&D 8001-8500 series boxcars. The decision as to how much prototypical accuracy is enough, is yours alone to make. What I'm presenting is strictly for informational purposes.
According to a multi-part article on what was the prototype for the Athearn car, and known as the "modified 1937 AAR 40 foot boxcar", appeared in the old Railmodel Journal magazine. A detailed roster of these cars in the August 1996 issue shows only Duluth, South Shore and Altantic 17000-17099, Illinois Central 17000-19999, Soo Line 42800-44498, and 136300-136398, even numbers only, were built with the sharp 90 degree corners, where the ends joined the car sides. The rest of the production had the round or "W" corner posts as found on all later production.
To some folks, that would be a deal breaker, others could care less. Your decision. What I do suggest is, go to www.train-life.com and click on magazines in order to access issues of defunct model railroading magazines they have posted. If you are interested in accuracy in your rolling stock modeling, these old magazines will be a valuable resource. Railmodel Journal, Model Railroading, and Mainline Modeler all provided that which is missing today, for someone interested in accurate prototype modeling.
NHTX FRRYKid, Since you seem to have an interest in prototypical accuracy, the Athearn car, as has been noted, has some detail differences that could rule out the FW&D 8001-8500 series boxcars. The decision as to how much prototypical accuracy is enough, is yours alone to make. What I'm presenting is strictly for informational purposes. According to a multi-part article on what was the prototype for the Athearn car, and known as the "modified 1937 AAR 40 foot boxcar", appeared in the old Railmodel Journal magazine. A detailed roster of these cars in the August 1996 issue shows only Duluth, South Shore and Altantic 17000-17099, Illinois Central 17000-19999, Soo Line 42800-44498, and 136300-136398, even numbers only, were built with the sharp 90 degree corners, where the ends joined the car sides. The rest of the production had the round or "W" corner posts as found on all later production.
That I think I can live with. I remember reading an article about modeling freight cars recently mentioning that it's not neccesary to be completely perfect with the cars. These along with some composite hoppers will be part of some traffic I'm adding for sugar plant service. They would end up being "background" cars. As I have close to 200 cars, I can't be perfect on all of them. I have some that the rivet pattern isn't quite right. Others probably aren't quite the right length (a couple of bulkheads). The main things I try to fix are items like roofwalks where they shouldn't be, solid sills where the model has sawtooth ones, a missing short beam on a another (10 coal hopper cars), wrong type of door, etc
NHTX go to www.train-life.com and click on magazines in order to access issues of defunct model railroading magazines they have posted.
go to www.train-life.com and click on magazines in order to access issues of defunct model railroading magazines they have posted.
I went to check that for a different magazine I was looking for. First off, there is no hyphen in that address. Unfortunately, they don't have the magazine I was looking for.
If you build your railroad high enough you need not worry about what the roof looks like.
Unfortunately the railroad is about 39" from the floor. Built so that I can sit in a chair if I so desire and still operate it.