Model Railroading > TO Inspired SP&S box as BN MofW 1978

On July 17 TO member "PFE COI" posted a suite of 40-foot box cars that were in MofW service after being phased out of revenue business.
One of them was the BN 950064 at Klamath Falls, OR in August, 1978, with former Spokane Portland & Seattle billboard letters and "football" logo still looking good, Photo 1 is my model posed on a print of that image..
I made a stand-in from an HO scale Kadee 40-ft. PS-1 with 6' doors and Microscale decals plus some experimental weathering. (Photo 2)
This is not a "RPM" project, the prototype cars were built by NP's Brainard, MN shops using both Pullman Standard ends and Stanray (diagonal panel) roofs.  There may be other compromises but it works for me.
I painted it with rattle can Tamyia NATO brown plus a gray+silver sprayed together for the roof and mud brown underframe. I gave it Glosscote before decals, Tamyia flat clear after decals, and Rustall Dead Flat airbrushed after weathering with powders and chalks.  The white streaks were from white chalk pencils, if I were to do it over I'd try an oil paint stain to make those fine white streaks, the chalk ended up with too many specks of white.
The BN numbers and BN green patches are on bits of Tamyia masking tape, when I back-date the layout to before the BN merger I will peel them off, Photo 3 shows it before I put the patches on.
If you have not built one of Kadee's PS-1 line of undecorated box car kits you should treat yourself to one of the best looking, best engineered kits on the market.
All parts fit perfectly without glue, the metal floor gives good weight, and of course you end up with the couplers you want ("scale size") at exactly the right height.
This is my third Kadee kit painting project.  Your LHS should be able to order these, or Kadee can furnish them by ordering on their web site, I have done both.
 

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Well done, nice looking car.  It's been on my project list for some time (oh, say, since I first saw it in Klamath Falls) but you beat me to it.

Ron Hawkins
(pfe_coi)

Do you know why BN went to the trouble of adding a separate steel plate for the reporting marks? Was the metal surface too far gone foe a paint patch? 

It is just a paint patch (a very square and straight patch), not a plate on the prototype.

"Metal Plate?"  Oh rats, my masking tape didn't fool everyone.
Yes, the patch of painted masking tape is my lazy way to make a reversible patch so I can back date to pre-BN era.
I have done removable patches for locos too, after photographing year 2006 as BNSF, I now have 1996 era unpatched Santa Fe and BN power.
I also made patches with decals over Micro Mask.  They are thinner and look better but are a little tricky to remove.

That is a very good looking roof due to your weathering, congrats.
TC

Looks good, but I agree that the patch is a weeeee bit thick.  Regardless, if it suits your needs, it's not terribly distracting.  These sorts of things get amplified in photos, as opposed to operations in real life.

Regarding the Kadee car, I've got one of those kits upstairs that I still need to put together.  About how long was the kit assembly for you?

- Jeff Carlson

There is a learning curve on assembly of Kadee box cars.  My first one took about 2 hours, the second one (this one) about one hour, up to the finishing stage.
There are only exactly the number of parts you need.  I dropped one grabiron and ended up buying some replacements from Kadee.
(Actually I dropped several but found all but one.)
Some parts are very clever, The end frames and coupler pockets (with couplers factory installed) slide into slots on the metal floor.  There is one trainline pipe and one overlay underframe segment with cast on brake equipment and the bottom half of floor beams.  Those five components make the whole underframe, coupler, air hose, and uncoupling lever assembly.  The grabiorns, ladders, retainer line, brakewheel/platform/rod assembly are each press fit into the body as a nice snug fit, no glue needed (although I want to believe the paint helps hold them.)
The sliding doors snap into the openings, this means you can paint them detached from the car so there is no paint or weathering shadow effect and you can paint the floor so if the door is openit will look right.  The metal floor itself is a blackened metal casting.
Most of the time is painting and decaling.
I put one resistor wheelset in place of the Kadee wheelset to give signal circuit shunting.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/20 09:03 by railstiesballast.