Intermountain "12 Panel" boxcar, info?

[PJPickard]

It seems not a lot of info is out there on what exactly car this is. GN and SP prototypes? Some info here on TRW but not much either. I did manage to wile away many hours on cool freight car site while looking for info!
Anyone know what I can paint and decal a few of these for? My era is late 40's-early 50's. The links below are from the Itermountain site...but I don't really know if these are legit schemes for the car.

This is really another topic...but how the hell do you search the Microscale decal site??? I'm looking for a basic boxcar decal set that would do this car:
https://www.intermountain-railway.com/n/html/66013.htm

or this:
https://www.intermountain-railway.com/n/html/66001.htm

Thanks!

[nickelplate759]

K4 Decals makes a set that is close: https://k4decals.com/products/great-northern-40-ft-steel-boxcar-white-and-black-side-goat-decal-gn40?_pos=6&_sid=0b8125647&_ss=r&variant=42125950714015

Microscale's site has a pulldown menu with road names in it - you can just select Great Northern - but I don't see any sets for the boxcar you want.

[PJPickard]

Thanks George! As for the Microscale site...I guess I'm asking too much for a breakdown, like: Scale; Road name; rolling stock type; era. Sifting thru a couple dozen pages is a bit tedious. I'm glad you looked though because I didn't find any either, and I thought I must be missing it somewhere.

[wazzou]

N Scale decals have 60 in the prefix.  HO decals would have 87.


@PJPickard
Set 60-185 will get you the GN car you want.

[garethashenden]

What was the cool freight car site?

[PJPickard]

The car site started here with all the links and just went down the rabbit hole from there

https://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/

Probably spent the most time here, yeah I know not N scale but cool stuff. I've been following Gene for MANY years

https://myp48.wordpress.com/

[nkalanaga]

Almost all GN 40 ft single door boxcars had the 12-panel sides.  The GN built most of their cars, and that was one of their standards.  Why?  I have no idea, since 10-panel sides worked fine for most roads.

[nkalanaga]

CDS dry transfers used to make a set for this GN scheme, but where you'd find them today I have no idea.

K4 decals are good quality, I've used them, and since the N scale set will do four cars, is considerably cheaper than the dry transfers.

[JMaurer1]

How does Microscale stay in business? I understand that not as many people paint and decals rolling stock as they did in the past, but looking up on MS site and they have next to no Southern Pacific...anything. As I recall, the original SP boxcar set had a low number (60...110...I just don't remember) but it was a very generic set that covered just about every boxcar they had so most of the decals weren't used for any specific time period. They did come out with a better set, 60-911 but that set is mostly for OB box cars so the data (if it matters with how small it would be) might be incorrect. Personally, I have been using the 60-911 set mostly because you can't read most of the data anyways. Other than that, you would need to use something other than Microscale to decal an SP version of these cars.

[amato1969]

@JMaurer1 , on the Microscale site, just choose "Southern Pacific" from the "Quick Links" dropdown (top left); you should see a bunch of their SP sets:

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=SP

  Frank

[thomasjmdavis]

I find it much more efficient to avoid the Microscale "quick links" all together- because using the quick links for SP or ATSF or PRR or other popular roads, you end up with 10 or more slow loading pages, of mixed scales and can spend a half hour sorting through only to find that whatever you are looking for is not available.

Quicker is to enter what you are looking for in their search bar, try "Southern Pacific boxcar".  It will ignore scale if you enter it, and show you all the HO in addition to N (or scale of your choice). It does not produce a "link" to the search results ( https://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc? is what I am looking at in the address bar ), but if you enter the terms into "search" you hopefully get the same results I do.

All that said, I have also become a fan of K4 Decals- VASTLY better selection of freight car decals than Microscale.  MS remains my go-to for loco decals, but all of my freight car decals purchases of the past several years have come from K4.

[amato1969]

Don't forget about Highball Graphics.  They have a variety of nice sets, and their decals perform well!

https://highballgraphics.com

[thomasjmdavis]

Sorry, it took me a while to remember where this link was among the 10000 bookmarks on my computer.  Steam Era Freightcars is the "bible" of freight cars.  A gentleman named Ed Hawkins put together speadsheets on just about every boxcar that is NOT a PS-1.
Pertinent to the current discussion:
http://steamerafreightcars.com/prototype/frtcars/postwaraarmain.html

Note this is a "http" site, not "https" so you may get some scary messages on your browser.  To determine how many panels a given car has, note the column in each spreadsheet titled "side constr,", which will indicate number of panels (10, 12, or 14) and R(riveted) or W (welded).  There is a wealth of other info- carbuilder, door and brakewheel type, etc.

[PJPickard]

Some good info here...thanks to all. I ordered some GN from K4

[JMaurer1]

Love the data from Steam Era Freightcars, but wish that it was updated more often (6 years since last update). Since I have already found that info, I just keep wishing that they would start posting again...yes, I even volunteered to help but didn't get any answers.