Walthers 50' Double Door Single Sheathed Boxcar Prototypes

[garethashenden]

I just came across a couple of these as undecorated kits. Which railroads had them? I'm most interested in the cars that lasted the longest, but a complete roster would be nice too.

[nkalanaga]

The NP had some similar cars, which lasted into the early BN years.

[squirrelhunter]

The Steam Era Freight Car list on groups.io is has several threads on these cars in HO, and there were several articles in the defunct Model Railroading/Railroad Model Journal that were kind of a survey of prototypes. I'll see if I cam find the dates, they are available on TrainLife.

The short answer is I think the end door version decorated for NP was close but the prototype I think used a radial roof? 

[JMaurer1]

Rail Model Journal had the articles in the July, Oct, and Nov 1989 issues but I got an error when I tried to pull up any of the magazines on TrainLife. Apparently MoPac, T&P 70750-70799, I-GN 14251-14265, and StLB&M 20551-20565 are the closest matches but they had Dalman trucks on these.    WP is close (13001-13100), but also had radial roofs. ATSF, MILW, NP, SP or UP had similar cars (50' wood OB) but are not even close to the Walthers car. Most of the west coast roads (as I recall) were 1 1/2 door cars much closer to the very old Concor cars.

Most came with terribly warped doors that were glued on (it seemed the glue warped the thin doors) so they looked...rather poor. I have a few but I think I converted most to open top wood chip cars.

[JMaurer1]

Look what I found for more info:

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=30311.0

Includes a post from me (of all people):

Kenneth Anthony put together this information on another board back when I was trying to put together a list of the prototypes for the different rolling stock that was available. Problem with the idea is all too often, there either wasn't a prototype or nobody knew what it was. Still this may help some (it just took me awhile to go back and find it):

The real railroads also had 50 foot single-sheathed automobile boxcars with two Youngstown-style steel doors on each side. Walthers made a model of these cars. Spookshow says the cars came in two versions, with an end-loading door and with regular (non-opening) ends both ends. Here’s a link to Spookshow’s picture:

http://www.visi.com/~spookshow/freight/50ribdd.html

Roadnames from the 1998 Walthers N/Z Scale Catalog
932-8351 Great Northern
932-8352 Union Pacific
932-8353 Northern Pacific
932-8354 Milwakee
932-8355 Southern Pacific
932-8356 Santa Fe
932-8350 undecorated

The catalog gives no indications which cars have the end doors. Spookshow’s photo shows an end door on a Northern Pacific car. (EDIT: apparently only the NP had the end doors)

Model spotting characteristics: 50 foot nominal length, single sheathed Howe truss, 4 panels to the left of the doors and 5 to the right. Youngstown-style corrugated steel doors. Steel Dreadnaught ends (I can’t tell the number or arrangement of ribs...) The roof looks like steel panels with standing ribs or seams.

Model Railroader ran an article on superdetailing these models with fishbelly USRA-style center-sill underframes and a reinforcement under the doors. One or the other or both of these applies to some of the prototypes, marked with an asterisk.* The article shows a Milwaukee Road car, but they did NOT have a prototype photo to verify the details. The superdetailing article is in Model Railroader July2000 p.86.

Prototypes WITHOUT doors:
Great Northern GN 41744 p.30 Freight Car Models Vol.II/Box Cars Book 1 (RailModel Journal) ends are 3/3/3 Dreadnaught. Walthers model could use modification for reinforcement under the doors, and fishbelly center sill, per Model Railroader article.*


Prototypes WITH END DOORS

Frisco SLSF #152805 photo Furniture and Automobile Box Cars Santa Fe Rwy Rolling Stock Reference p.14

NP #4803 w end doors p.31 Freight Car Models Vol.II/Box Cars Book 1 (RailModel Journal) Walthers model could use modification for fishbelly center sill, per Model Railroader article.*

Texas & Pacific T&P #70045; #70203. #70300. Cars with end doors. Freight Car Models Vol.II/Box Cars Book 1 (RailModel Journal) Walthers model could use modification for fishbelly center sill, per Model Railroader article.*

Western Pacific WP #40055. Car with end doors. P.26 Freight Car Models Vol.II/Box Cars Book 1 (RailModel Journal) Walthers model could use modification for reinforcement under the doors, and fishbelly center sill, per Model Railroader article.*

Other “NEAR PROTOTYPES” that would look somewhat similar to model. However, they have different numbers of panels from the 4-5 panel arrangement of the model.

Central Vermont 42015 3-4 panel (link to photo
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3-hpr5fsS0...New+London.jpg


Rock Island #264026 p.32 3-4 panels Freight Car Models Vol.II/Box Cars Book 1 (RailModel Journal)

[wazzou]

Here is just a quick snapshot from today of one of the two I own.
The other is a GN car that I carefully brush painted Vermilion Red, in order to preserve all of the lettering, but alas the doors were so badly warped, it is in the RIP Box for another day...
This one has had the doors braced from the inside as much as possible, lowered, and MT stirrups installed.
I think the door casting still cracked a little from the stress of the bracing.

[thomasjmdavis]

Here's a T&P car, after several rebuilds (several door mods, and steel sheathing- so it looks a bit different, but you can see the "heritage").
https://www.texaspacificrailway.org/rolling-stock/texas-and-pacific-railway-rolling-stock-boxcar-75007--a--end-image-156.html

[squirrelhunter]

JMaurer1, thanks for posting the dates for the Railmodel Journal issues that cover 50' single sheathed boxcars!

I did some more digging, and there were articles in the July 1995 and 1996 issues of Railmodel Journal on single sheathed 50' boxcars as well.

Also you can access the Train Life magazines still by directly typing in the URL like this:
http://magazine.trainlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/rmj_198907.pdf

The key is to know the abbreviation for the magaine you are looking for (RMJ for Railmodel Journal in this case) and the month of the issue you are looking for. MRR is for Model Railroading and PTM is for Prototype Modeler.