Lee Turner’s model and photo of the Rails Unlimited NKP/C&O 1932 ARA boxcar
Manufactured By:Rails Unlimited MSRP August 2012: Flat kit $80.00 Assembled body $110.00 Masters By: Lee Turner
Rails Unlimited released a 1932 ARA Standard Boxcar with radial roof. The masters for this car were done by Lee Turner who also built the car in the photo. I picked up a kit at this year’s National. Ted is offering the kits two ways, either a built up car body that needs to be detailed or as a flat kit.
Prototype History The 1932 ARA Standard Boxcar was the first all-steel boxcar adopted by the American Railway Association. Unfortunately for the design it was adopted near the height of the Depression. Because of this, not many railroads had the funds to buy this design. The total number of cars was only 14,500 cars. The history of these cars are thoroughly described in Ted Culotta’s book, The American Railway Association Standard Box Car of 1932 (Speedwitch Media, 2004).
The models are based on two orders of cars for the NKP and C&O which were built with a Hutchins radial roof. The prototype cars were built in 1934, 500 cars for the NKP in series 13000-13499 and 650 cars for the C&O in series 7000-7649.
The instruction list these cars lasting into the mid sixties in large number while a few cars survived into the early 70’s. My January 1952 ORER lists 634 out of the 650 C&O cars in service and 479 out of the 500 NKP cars in service plus 5 cars with Note H. So what was Note H you ask?
“Note H – Individual numbers of cars in service in series 13000 to 13400 having roof hatches and differing in A.A.R. Mech. Designation from other cars in same series; A.A.R. Mech. Designation LC: 13065, 13084, 13213, 13311, 13313”
Description: I have to say that one of the highlights of the National was getting to see, in person, a pair of Protocraft’s 41-N passenger trucks. These are a work of art.
I talked to the man from Wasatch Model Company, who imported them for Protocraft. These trucks are made by the same builder that does the fine line of Wasatch O scale trucks. I began to realize, I need to make the purchase of these trucks sooner than later. As with everything O scale, buy them when they are around, they may not be run again, and they almost always will never be the same price the next time around.
I have seven of the SGL cars, which I found at a very good price without a box about a year ago. Who needs the box anyway? They started out as a three rail cars, SGL imported both. From what I’ve read about the cars, the two version were the same except for the trucks and couplers.
So when I got home from the National, I ordered the seven pairs I needed to convert my cars. They arrived on Saturday. WOW! This is the detail level that I got into O scale for back in the 80’s.
I set a pair under one of the passenger cars today and the car sat a little high. I think a little work to the bolster and they will sit exactly where the railroad wanted them too. Now I just have to dig out the Reading Company diagrams for these cars, to know the correct height they need to be at.
NMRA Proto48 Specification:
I measured the trucks and find that they are within NMRA spec. Here are the measurements and I’ve added their measurements to the NMRA S-4.1 Proto48 Wheel Standards
Check Gauge
Back to Back
Wheel Width
Flange Width
Flange Depth
Specification Range
1.124 1.134
1.100 1.112
0.115 0.120
0.024 0.028
0.022 0.026
Protocraft General Casting Corp’s 41-N passenger truck, double insulated axles
1.132
1.108
0.115
0.024
0.022
Plus and Minus… Opinions:On the plus-side:
WOW! Lots of WOW factor!
They are a Museum level model all by themselves.
The trucks measured up fine against the NMRA Specification.
To say they roll well is a bit of an understatement.
The trucks do look very nice, they capture the look of the prototype based on the photos and drawings I’ve seen.
On the minus-side:
Some day I may think of a minus for these trucks….
Only thing I can say is that when they run out at Protocraft, Norm has stated that they may not be run again. If they are, they will never be priced this low again.
Overall:
If you are running this style of Passenger truck on your equipment, buy these trucks. You will not be sorry.
I bought this MTH SW-1 shell a couple of years ago. The SW-8 frame has the same wheel spacing as the SW-1 so I thought I could drop the shell on top of the frame. You pretty much can but there are a couple of other thing you need to do to finish up the model. The SW-1 frame top is a different pattern then the longer hood of the SW-8. Atlas did not continue the sapty tread pattern of the deck under the hoo or cab of their SW-8. WHy should they you would never see it. But when the shorter SW-1 hood was placed on top the difference is easy to spot. In the photo it shows up as the unpaited and untextured area in front and behind the shell.
This meant that a new frame deck was needed. I did that and I even cut it slightly wider then the frame deck to take care of the second visual difference in the frames. The SW-1 had a top lip to its frame, the side of the SW-8/9 has a smooth side.
If you have seen this site in the last year you would know that I have been going back and forth about how to model the Elmira branch of the PRR, include Williamsport or Southport wasusualy the hang up. Williamsport did not allow enough Reading to meet my need and Southport gave more interchange but none with the Reading. Anyway, I kept going back and forth about this unit and never finished the conversion because I would need the SW-1 and then the yard would change and I would need an SW-9. Since that is no longer the question and I do not need the SW-1 in this idea of the Shamokin division I decided the shell needed a new home which it now has.
BTW the SW-9 doesn’t fit in the new layout time period. So an All-Nation NW-2 shell is going on top of the Atlas frame. More on that to come.
Intermountain NYC USRA Twin – Everything from the box
Starting from the bottom, the trucks were removed and then the hopper opening mechanism.Parts removed from underfram and the center crossmember on the interior.
Laying out the center brace on .030 styrene
Center brace is in the car and the interior rivet detail is being fitted. Note the castings in the forground. I built all the parts to detail the interiors and then made a rubber mold and cast the parts.
Details have been added to one side of the model.
Rivets detail and center braces have been added in theis view.
Here is a quick look at what I have on my workbench. It’s a Gem PRR B6sb tender.
I started by removing the marker castings, handrails, and rear headlight.
I made up the missing rivet strip for the middle of the tender by punching rivets in a piece of sheet brass and cutting out the strip. This was not as easy as working with styrene, although similar it had a very different feel to the process. Once it was made, it was soldered in place. The rivet strip in the photo was actually my second attempt. The first one looked OK until I asked myself a question, “If this were a styrene model instead of brass would I keep it?” The answer was no, so out came the torch and off it went. It only added an extra half hour to make the new part and solder it in place and it was time well spent.
Next came the new markers from Precision Scale (PSC) . My friend Matt Forsyth suggested placing a small square of brass under the markers feet since they did not sit well on the Gem brackets. That worked out great. It was tough trying to hold them while soldering them in place they tended to want to walk, but I applied pressure from the top to try to minimize this movement and was able to get them soldered on.
I next added the lifting brackets and a new headlight from Trackside Specialties. The headlight bracket was a pain because of the tiny feet on the casting. I left the mold spur at the bottom of the casting and alloud it to go through the bottom of the headlight platform on the tender. This allowed another surface to be soldered and gave the whole assembly some added strength.
Tonight, I added the conduit for the markers and headlight. I formed brass wire for one side of the conduit based on photo of the rear of the tender. This was fed through the casting for the junction box. The second side had to be formed with the casting on the wire. after that was soldered in place the two vertical conduits were formed and soldered in place.
Still to go is the remake of the handrails for the back of the tender and a little more clean up on the coal bunker.
I started with an undecorated Intermountain USRA Twin Kit to build this Reading class HTj hopper. The lettering was pieced together from the Microscale #48-496 Reading Twin Hopper set. This model represents a car that was painted prior to WW2.
The Reading replaced the as delievered brake ratchet with a power hand brake and upgraded the car to AB brakes by the late thirties. Parts from an Intermountain Boxcar were used to make the changes.
This model is riding on San Juan 50 ton Andrews trucks with PSC wheelsets. They still need to be painted.
The Intermountain Kit was used to build this Reading class HTj USRA Twin. The factory lettering was the basis for this model with additional lettering coming from the Microscale #48-496 Reading Twin Hopper set.
The Reading replaced the as delievered brake ratchet with a power hand brake by the late thirties. Parts from an Intermountain Boxcar were used to make the changes. The Kit was built to represent a car that had been upgraded to AB Brakes.
This model is riding on Athern Andrews trucks with Intermountain wheelsets. While this does make an nice rolling truck it will be changed out to the San Juan 50 ton Andrews like it had when it was a Proto48 model.
Prototype History The H21 was originally designed as a 50 ton coke car. Construction of new H21 cars ran from 1909 through 1914. They were built by Altoona Car shops, Pressed Steel Car Co., Cambria Steel Co., American Car & Foundry, and Standard Steel Car Co.
A total of 21,738 car were built as the 50 ton H21 car class. It did not take long for the railroad to see that these cars had the capacity to hold 70 tons of coal. Lines West began converting the class into H21a’s in 1911. In 1912 the railroad began producing H22’s for coke service and converting the H21’s to handle coal. All H21’s would be converted to H21a by 1925. The conversion was basically placing 70 ton Crown trucks under the cars.
From 1915-1918 the railroad built an additional 14,270 H21a cars. The builders of the new cars were the same as for the H21’s with the addition of Ralston Steel Car Co. The railroad began to see that the frames were not able to hold up to the 70 ton coal loading. They began adding the reinforcement angle on the top sill from bolster to bolster starting in 1919. A corner to corner strengthened bulb angle would start appearing in the ’30’s but would not result in a class change. Nor would the conversion from original style “clamshell” hopper to “sawtooth” hoppers result in a class change.
The H21b class was created in 1930 when the railroad started a program to upgrade 100 cars with a 12 inch ARA center sill. This program was again done in 1943 to bring the total of H21b’s to 198. Externally there were no visible features to distingush the class besides the class stencil.
The H21d was a one-of-a-kind car conversition into a covered hopper car. While the H21d looks neat, I do not like to model one car classes. As I’ve pointed out before, most likely you would not have ever seen the car standing trackside in real life.
The class H21e first appeard in August of 1947 and reached a peak of 8,546 cars by January of 1953. The rebuild included adding a power hand brake and internal crossridge stakes. The power brakes had been applied to some H21a class cars without resulting in a class change. These H21a’s retained their internal cross ties at stakes 2, 4, 6, and 8. Some H21e car would have their side stakes welded on instead of the normal riveted side stakes.
In 1953 the PRR rostered 37173 class H21 hoppers. The OER did not fully split out the subclasses of “a”, “b” or “e.” Here are some fleet totals for the H21 class from 1952-1958 OER’s and the percentage that number represented to the total PRR open hopper fleet.
1952: 39702 cars 49.5% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
1953: 37173 cars 50.2% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
1956: 30737 cars 53.2% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
1958: 28020 cars 47.8% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
The PRR Steel Hopper book lists the following for class breakdowns for July of 1953: 35,256 total cars, 26576 H21a, 170 H21b, 1 H21d, 8509 h21e.
Cars of later subclasses are after my modeling time of 1952. I’ll let someone else talk about those classes.
References: Keystone Article PRR Steel Open Hopper Cars – John Teichmoeller January 1952 Official Railway Equipment Register September 1953 Official Railway Equipment Register April 1956 Official Railway Equipment Register
Modeling the H21’s in Proto48 In O scale we have been blessed with nice brass examples of the H21’s over the years. Some are clearly better, more accurate, or have finer details than others. And they have different price tags to go with them. The manufacturers of these cars are Precision Scale, Pacific Limited, Yoder Models and Keystone Model Works.
In recent years we have been blessed with a plastic version from Atlas O. While not a a finely detailed as some of the better brass car the cost about one sixth of the newest brass cars.
I hope to have additional posts about my modeling of these hopper cars.
