Board Size Comparison on wooden freight cars.

[ncbqguy]

You can use a High Speed Products Atlas/Model Power UP prototype knockoff...even it has open slats.

[Albert in N]

Took photo with my well used entry level Fujifilm Finepix AX655 16 mega pixel camera.  Subjects (on left) are old 1970s Bachmann stock car, newer 2007 Silver Series Bachmann stock car,  (on right) Micro Trains stock car and caboose.  Thought that the stock car wood sides and caboose sides would show board width for what it is worth. 

[ncbqguy]

Car siding on cabooses and house cars are tongue and groove any are different sizes than stock car slats and open top cars. 
Charlie Vlk

[learmoia]

I can see that in some focus group chosen from people who model 0-27, you could end up with a majority wanting a view block instead of seeing the moo-cow sound gear.

BUT....why did they make solid sides, instead of molding an actual model of the PRR stockcar with open slats, and providing pieces of styrene that would fit inside to be the viewblock? People who did not want that could slide them out.  Or you could take the viewblocks out, paint cows on them, or download someone's cow decal from Railwire, then re-install.  And by tooling a floor, they could have marketed the non-sound version to those of us who want our stock cars to look like stock cars.

The funny thing is, I blackened the speaker enclosure with a sharpie and stuck an Atlas Stock car shell on the frame and had a somewhat see through car, and you couldn't tell it had a sound decoder inside..

Not intending to sway the subject.  Just poking fun that it looks more like a wood boxcar than stock car.. (with gaps slightly wider than the Rapido meat reefer..)   

[peteski]

I can see that in some focus group chosen from people who model 0-27, you could end up with a majority wanting a view block instead of seeing the moo-cow sound gear.

BUT....why did they make solid sides, instead of molding an actual model of the PRR stockcar with open slats, and providing pieces of styrene that would fit inside to be the viewblock? People who did not want that could slide them out.  Or you could take the viewblocks out, paint cows on them, or download someone's cow decal from Railwire, then re-install.  And by tooling a floor, they could have marketed the non-sound version to those of us who want our stock cars to look like stock cars.

I recall a thread about this car here (when the car was released).  The solid sides ware the least of the problem (the entire engraving of the wooden boards was just slightly exaggerated). And I'm not exaggerating.    It looked more like a caricature of a stock car than a scale model.

[OldEastRR]

Other wood-sided cars were the old ConCor woodside  40' boxcars and the MTL single-sheath steel-braced 40 footers. then there were the Roundhouse/Athearn short wood-sided passenger cars.

[learmoia]

Here are 2 samplings at 1020px wide.
First Boxcars:
Top to Bottom: Bachmann, Trix V1, Trix V2 (???), Con-Cor, Roco (which may be the same as Trix V2), Atlas A1G/Life LIke, Micro-Trains
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Second Wood Reefers:
Top to Bottom: Micro-Trains, Arnold, Con-Cor (Kato), Bachmann, Trix.
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Still looking for my BLI Stock Cars..

[Nato]

                            :|Learmonia, Thanks for the additional photos comparing various cars,. To answer Charlies question/request No I do not have a Lone Star Caboose, and my Revell Rapido wood cabeese are buried away in storage some where. The Trix caboose and the Con Cor are the same car. The UP car in my photo I believe is Con Cor. I see quite a few cars in Learmonias' photos that I had Forgotten about.       Nate Goodman (Nato).                     

[learmoia]

Ok Stock Cars...

Quiz of the day.. there are 2 BLI sound cars in this picture..
 Find them...
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~Ian

[OldEastRR]

I've got that same Big Four wood ConCor boxcar ... I cut down the side walls so the roof sits right above the door tracks  and took off all the foobie junk they stuck on the ends. Kept the original paint scheme tho.

[Jbub]

Both on the right side. Top and 4th down. Couplers give it away

[learmoia]

Both on the right side. Top and 4th down. Couplers give it away

@Jbub
You got 1 of them...  (Right side 4th down).

Right side top is a Con-Cor wood side boxcar.

~Ian

[nickelplate759]

the other is the 2nd from the top on the left.  You were sneaky and changed at least one coupler (and didn't show the other).  New body is even sneakier.

I actually thought the BLI car on the right was a boxcar at first!

[learmoia]

the other is the 2nd from the top on the left.  You were sneaky and changed at least one coupler (and didn't show the other).  New body is even sneakier.

I actually thought the BLI car on the right was a boxcar at first!

@nickelplate759
Winner...

When I first got them, I was intending to run them with my vintage stuff so I was messing around with changing to Rapido couplers.. So I was looking at body mount options.. I think that was a bachmann coupler but it sits too high.  The body as an Atlas 2nd gen stock car.

When you put the BLI body next to wood boxcars and actual stock cars... It's a boxcar..

All in all.. It is obvious that BLI 'could have' tooled the car correctly (see through), and you wouldn't see the sound stuff inside.. (There is a speaker enclosure inside the body so there is no effect to sound)..

~Ian