Built up some more 1930's era boxcars over the last few days. Accurail USRA Boxcar Funaro and Camelengo Ventilated boxcar Jon
Jon: Which kit is more difficult to assemble: F&C or Westerfield? Which do you prefer for realism? I think Accurail is pretty good for a plastic box assembly; they look nice. Thanks. Very nice cars; thanks for the pictures.
F&C because of the instructions - very confusing in places. The Westerfield kit came without instructions - no problem. I worked from the photo on the box. They are both equally well detailed, although the F&C kit needed more cleaning up of the parts. Both kits came with decals - a major plus for me. NB - they are both resin kits and need to be assembled with superglue - not everyone's cup of tea. Jon
I love those boxcars, Jon. I have a few F&C and Westerfield cars myself....only they're still in the boxes.
The cars look pretty good! Box cars all had horizontal wood sides, while reefers had vertical wood sides. Once in a while we would see a box car go by with a board or two broken off where something heavy had hit it from inside leaving a hole for us to see inside. I do remember there were three long slats for the walkway on top. We kids used to run along and jump from one car to the next. It was a scary thing for a 7 year old too, it was a three foot space and nothing but hard steel coupler and ballast below if we missed out footing. IIRC box cars back in the 30's were 30, 38, and 40 footers, and almost all had a 'toad stool' brake wheel up on top, not on an end. A lot of them had turn-buckle truss rods (4) under the floors, while some were sway-backed even then from loads that were too heavy. I think when solid steel side box cars came out was when they went to 50 feet. I could be wrong on this because I am going from memory here. You could cut down an Athaern blue box kit, maybe.
Sweet!!! Are the details parts plastic or metal? I've been putting quite a number of P2K box cars together cussing all the time because of the brittle detail parts. Maybe that's why I've been getting them so cheap. Must admit though they do look good afterwards. verse
Verse, both have resin detailling parts and 'Tichy' plastic brake gear included. Neither come with wheels trucks or couplers (although my Westerfield kit had Kadee trucks and couplers in the box - Result! Jon
Watash, There were lots of 36' boxcars too - at least they were very popular in Canada. There are steel sided 40-footers too that came out before WW2. Glad you made that jump and could join us today...! Andrew
