does any one know of a correct prototype for these cars? I have one, it has 4/5 ends and seems about 10' high, just wondering, thanks, Mike H
AAR 1932 boxcar.
Ed
I got one of those Varney boxcars when I received my first HO train stuff. It was in New York Central's Pacemaker scheme, but I eventually repainted it as a CPR car, as CP owned 700 of those cars. The 1932 ARA car drew heavily from CPR's earlier "Minibox", with added improvements.Because I had used CP's late '50s "script" lettering scheme, I decided, since I had backdated my layout to the late '30s, to re-work the car before re-lettering it.
I mostly disassembled the car in order to both tighten the joints between ends and sides and between the body and roof. The cast metal roofwalk was cracked in a couple of places, and the brake gear on the car's "B"-end was a bit crude, as was the brake detail on the underbody. The car's plastic ladders were also somewhat crude, and weren't in great shape either.The car originally had free-standing wire grabirons, but they were overly thick and in the wrong places, too. I removed all of them, then drilled-out the original mounting holes to a size about .003"/.004" smaller than some Evergreen styrene rod I had on-hand. Contact cement was then used to affix .060" sheet styrene behind all of the drilled-out holes, and then same-size holes drilled through that material, too. I then applied solvent-type cement, in-turn, to the holes and to the ends of short pieces of styrene rod. After allowing a few seconds for the solvent to soften the plastic, the rod material was forced into the holes. Once the joints had hardened, any excess material on the outside of the car was removed.
New holes were drilled for grabirons, and I replaced the doors with better detailed plastic ones, also lowering the too-high bottom door tracks. A new roofwalk was added using scale 2"x6" styrene "planks", too...
While I could have painted the re-worked car in CPR's plain block lettering scheme of that period, I opted instead to make it a C&O car. Lettering is dry transfers, from C-D-S...
Wayne
Wayne am I correct in assuming from your reference to separate ladders and grab irons that this is a Varney metal kit from the '50s, and not the plastic boxcar they evidently offered in the 1960s?
Dave Nelson
Yes, mine is plastic, with a four over five end, cast on wood roof walk, still looks usable though. Nice job Wayne!
I had assumed that the Varney plastic boxcar was a copy of the Varney metal boxcar.
The metal one is a 1932 AAR version. It has 4/4 ends.
The plastic one should not be, if it has 4/5 ends. So, what THAT one is is still in question.
Thanks, Mike.
Dave, yes, my car is the metal one. I hadn't realise that Varney made a similar plastic boxcar, although I bought a single sheathed boxcar from my LHS's "used" table, and it's very similar in overall appearance to Varney's stock car. Although the body is a one-piece moulding with a separate floor, the roof, especially its overhang and the ends and eaves, is very reminiscent of the Varney stock car, which had a removeable roof. It has 3-4 ends, but no mention on it of the company which offered it.Varney did make a plastic automobile boxcar, shown in the photo below. I actually repainted mine (brush-applied Floquil) and re-lettered it with the stepped version of Canadian Pacific's '50s-era lettering, but later stripped off that and was very surprised to see that the original painted-on/pad-printed lettering wasn't removed by the paint stripper (methyl hydrate).
It had a separate roof, with the body and floor as one piece, and a separate cast-metal fishbelly underframe. The doors worked, and the car's floor has moulded-in board detail. I recently gave the car to a friend who models the '50s era, as the lettering is too modern for my late '30s-era layout.
As far as I'm aware, LifeLike (Proto-No-Thousand) got the Varney line and released most of those cars in plastic, long before the Proto1000 and Proto2000 versions.I had always wanted one of Varney's metal reefers, but later bought (also from the "used" table) several LifeLike reefers which were apparently their take on Varney's original reefer - not all that similar, though.
Here's one in more-or-less original form, although I've added body-mounted Kadees, changed the trucks, and added a few details, plus paint and lettering...
Later, I decided that a reefer converted to ice service wouldn't likely have retained its ice bunkers, which gave me a good excuse to replace the roofs (three cars) with scratchbuilt ones, which also allowed me to have separate running boards, rather than the cast-on ones...
I still have two Varney hoppers from my first HO trains in 1955. One was originally the "covered" version, but they're both open now, with a few upgraded details. When I got them, as a Christmas gift, they, and the train and locos which accompanied them, were all equipped with Kadee's K-type couplers....
I'm currently scratchbuilding several gondolas on Tichy flatcars and, where possible, adding rivet detail using decals....
...and am tempted to scrape those cannonball-sized rivets from the Varney cars and replace them with the decal-type ones. Unfortunately, it looks as if the bracing members, like those on my gondolas, are too narrow to accommodate the strips of rivet decals.I do hope, though, to add the rivets to the insides of those gondolas.
7j43k I had assumed that the Varney plastic boxcar was a copy of the Varney metal boxcar. The metal one is a 1932 AAR version. It has 4/4 ends. The plastic one should not be, if it has 4/5 ends. So, what THAT one is is still in question. Ed
More research suggests that the plastic Varney boxcar with 4/5 ends and an IH of 10' is a 1937 AAR boxcar.
FWIW, Intermountain sells a 1937 AAR box.