Northern Central Boxcar from Bachmann

[Ed Kapuscinski]

These still don't look great, but... I am tempted to grab something "for the home road". It's not every day you can find NCR equipment.

https://www.modeltrainstuff.com/bachmann-n-15653-old-time-box-car-northern-central/

[Philip H]

Is it just me or do the trucks look upside down?

[ljudice]

These still don't look great, but... I am tempted to grab something "for the home road". It's not every day you can find NCR equipment.

https://www.modeltrainstuff.com/bachmann-n-15653-old-time-box-car-northern-central/

A museum - a few freight cars, a bunch of cabooses and ex-EL commuter cars + at least one rusty GG-1

[nscalbitz]

____

[garethashenden]

Wow! That looks like a corrugated boxcar.

[Jbub]

Is it just me or do the trucks look upside down?

Same though here

[peteski]

Wow! That looks like a corrugated boxcar.

Don't get me started on the board gaps! 

Hey, take a look at this.  Here is a photo of the old (1970s vintage, made in Hong Kong) Old Timer Box car (bare green plastic as I stripped it) compared the the new Bachmann offering.



Here is what I see:  Bachmann likely reused the underframe. The truss rods appear to be slightly reworked, but just as thick as the original ones. Those funky-looking trucks also look the same (except they replaced Rapidos with those Boxing Glove knuckles. Even the wheels look almost the same (a tad smaller flanges, and blackened).  The only new thing is the "corrugated" body and the price.   It still rides just a tad high.    Funny that the old body has much narrower and shallower board gaps.  And the new price?  $18 for a crude-looking toy?  Seriously?

EDIT:  Let's not forget the roofwalk molded with the roof and that brake wheel?!  Well, ignoring the board gaps and the crude rendering of the details (like the door rails), you could replace the trucks, roofwalk, and brake wheel with MTL parts, and lower the ride, but then the price will be well north of $20.  Like nkalanga said, a better model could be made from some evergreen plastic sheet.  The lettering is simple enough for a quick custom-decal job.

Besides Ed, aren't you changing scales? 

[nkalanaga]

Philip:  They do look strange, but fairly typical for archbar trucks.  Whether any prototypes were that tall I don't know, but the almost-straight lower bar is common.  Some had straight lower edges.  Other were more equally angled top and bottom.

Ed:  I'd save my money.  You could do a better job with Evergreen styrene, paint, dry transfers, and a pair of MT archbar trucks.  Not only would it look better, but it would probably be cheaper.

[davefoxx]

@Ed Kapuscinski,

Dear God, man!  Save your money for the new car, new house, and new layout.  Leave that god-awful boxcar at the store.  Ew.

DFF

[Maletrain]

Bachmann certainly "does its own thing" when it comes to bringing out new models.  I would love to have some understanding of their thought process, but I have no clue why the same company that makes an EM-1 locomotive also makes this thing.

[cjm413]

Philip:  They do look strange, but fairly typical for archbar trucks.  Whether any prototypes were that tall I don't know, but the almost-straight lower bar is common.  Some had straight lower edges.  Other were more equally angled top and bottom.

Ed:  I'd save my money.  You could do a better job with Evergreen styrene, paint, dry transfers, and a pair of MT archbar trucks.  Not only would it look better, but it would probably be cheaper.

Agreed - check out some of these scratchbuilt cars on the pdf file here:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.proto48.org/images/15/ScratchbuildingRollingStockwithStyrene.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj427KZtrXbAhXE5p8KHRZMAnYQFjAKegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw2q2mjEuvYymmJ2_YtUMlv7

[Mark5]

Ed, you'd probably come to regret buying this. 

[nkalanaga]

I'm not a great modeler, but here are a pair of Nn3 cars from many years ago, probably early 1990s.  The lettering is a combination of leftover CDS dry transfers, Walthers data decals, and WS dry transfers.  KD/MT trucks and couplers, etched brakewheels and cast K brakes by Detail Assoiciates(?), the rest is styrene sheet and strip, wood roofwalks, bits of wire and paper, and nylon line for the truss rods.



A standard gauge car would be even easier, as the parts would be bigger, but the techniques would be identical.

[brokemoto]

I might buy it just to have it, as the purpose of my nineteenth century pike is simply to give a nineteenth century impression.  B-mann is offering the four wheel Reading Company caboose with Penn markings, so I guess that I can buy one of those to go with my Atlas Northern Central eight wheeler (although my understanding is that the Atlas Northern Central is a different railroad, but...................again..............what is the purpose of my nineteenth century pike?).

If I could find some Northern Central decals, I could do one of the B-mann cabooses in that, but, for now, or, until Bachpersonn offers the caboose, it will have to be a Penn caboose.

There were all kinds of variations of the archbar truck in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Many of them were discarded, eventually,  in favour of those that look like the MT version.  In fact, the trucks used to vary even by division on the same railroad.  In the early days, there were wood trucks (which MT offers).  The problem with the archbars were that the stresses and trauma from the crummy track and rough roadbed was hard on the bolts that held them together, which caused them to come undone.  The initial versions of the Andrews truck were basically bolsters and pieces added to the archbar to relieve some of the stress and absorb some of the trauma.  What actually became the Andrews truck involved replacing most of the bolted joints with a cast frame, thus eliminating the possibility of bolts' coming loose.  The Andrews truck did have some bolted components, but the bolts were in places that were less subject to stress and trauma.

[cjm413]

I'm not a great modeler, but here are a pair of Nn3 cars from many years ago, probably early 1990s.  The lettering is a combination of leftover CDS dry transfers, Walthers data decals, and WS dry transfers.  KD/MT trucks and couplers, etched brakewheels and cast K brakes by Detail Assoiciates(?), the rest is styrene sheet and strip, wood roofwalks, bits of wire and paper, and nylon line for the truss rods.



A standard gauge car would be even easier, as the parts would be bigger, but the techniques would be identical.

They look good to me