Model Railroading > American Rail Box Company ABOX and RBOX boxcars

Kylie received 4 Exactrail FMC 5277 combo-door boxcars the other day and after she had ordered them she pulled out the rest of her ABOX, RBOX and CNA fleet, she has 29 FMC combo-door cars (11-Athearn, 17-Exactrail) and 2 Athearn PS 5277 RBOX cars, she became intrigued on the Railbox concept. She was interested enough to write a 5 page history and roster. She spent the last five days researching, looking at thousands of photos and compiled it all into her history/roster. Only after she did the research did she discover that Freight Cars Journal did two roster articles on the Railbox fleet that she was able to order so she can compare them to her research, they should arrive in a week or two from New Jersey. There is also an ebook she has ordered and is on the lookout for the Freight Cars Journal RBOX: Freight car roster and pictorial. She went through many Equipment registers, and freight car articles to get the information as well as not finding much online.

For the HO modelers you can model the fleet with the following:

Athearn

PS 5277 Boxcar, in both old and new schemes, CNA patched Railbox and full repaint
ACF, both old and new schemes, CNA full repaint,  very crude model, moulded on grab irons etc.
FMC 5277 combo-door, old and new schemes, CNA patched Railbox and full repaint, old MDC model
FMC 5347 Boxcar, both old and new schemes, CNA full repaint

Atlas

ACF, old and new schemes, CNA full repaint, very crude like Athearn model, may be same mould.

Exactrail

FMC 5277 combo-door boxcar, both old and new schemes, CNA patched Railbox and full repaint, very good model

Branchline

Berwick boxcar, out of production

Intermountain

PS 5277 Boxcar, both old and new schemes, as well as CNA repaint



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/16 21:18 by eminence_grise.

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Kylie is defiantly a stickler for detail  and thorough research. Very impressive.  If I ever need to research Railbox cars, I know where to go.

SantaFeRuss

Please tell Kylie, job well done. I have been wanting to do a couple of Southern, RF&P and NW boxes and this definietly helps as to what models to start with.

Happy New Years!

Regards,
Russ Goodwin
Buford, GA

Quite a report. Good job

The Atlas Trainman ACF car is a taller plate C car, whereas the old Athearn is a plate B.

Bachmann makes a clone of the old, crude Athearn model. The Bachmann and old Athearn both have an incorrect X-panel roof.

Walthers recently released a better version of the ACF plate B car in their Mainline series which has the correct diagonal panel roof, but is still crude by today's standards.

Atlas also released a very nice FMC 5077 car a few years ago.

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/16 09:29 by neilgross.

This is going to be very helpful to me, too. I've bought a variety of Railbox models over the years without knowing which ones had advanced to other owners by my intended year, 1990. With Kylie having done this research, I may have some restencilling (or selling) to do.

Also, Hubert's also produced some Railbox boxcars in HO. I'd have to go dig mine out to find out which type they were, but I'll can do that at some point if it helps the cause.
 

neilgross Wrote:
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> Walthers recently released a better version of the
> ACF plate B car in their Mainline series which has
> the correct diagonal panel roof, but is still
> crude by today's standards.

The Walthers model is kind of funny - the grabs and ladders are molded on, but the underbody detail is actually fairly good. Walthers doesn't a good job of showing that detail off, either on their website or in the YouTube video they put out. I'll post a photo later this week if you're interested - I bought 6 undecs to upgrade. It's definitely the best model of the ACF 5090 we've seen to date, but it's really unfortunate that they molded the body details on. Even so, I wouldn't describe it as "crude," any more than I would call Accurail's PS 4750 with molded details crude. "Basic" is probably a better term. I bought 6 of the Walthers cars, but I would have bought two dozen if they had done them as a higher-quality model.

Dave

Thanks for a very useful list.
FMC these days is back to being a specialty chemical company, with emphasis on the food industry. From 1965-85 it owned the Gunderson Bros. plant in Portland OR and elsewhere which produced mostly barges and railcars.  FMC stood for Food Machinery Corporation and from 1948, Food Machinery and Chemical Corporation before restyling itself FMC Corp. From the '40s through the '90s it was involved variously in the manufacture of landing craft, firefighting apparatus and other ventures.
Gunderson is now under the Greenbrier umbrella, and still building rail cars and barges.
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/16 14:29 by grahamline.