Model Railroading > Thought I had a Foobie

For a while yesterday I was thinking I got a foobie from Intermountain. The PS 50' Combo Door boxcar seemed like the real deal. UP had hordes of combo door boxcars in many sizes. But when I went looking for prototype photos, I wasn't coming up with diddly. There wasn't anything close to this number series. I was scouring the internet for photos, and the only thing close were the PS built cars in BC-70-6 class of cars (UP #167600-168099), but they were yellow and had cushioned coupler pockets on each end.

Worse yet was the recent comprehensive article on UP Combo Door Boxcars in the Streamliner magazines only listed 70-ton combo door cars up through class BC-70-8. But this car was clearly labeled as BC-70-9. I was getting the impression that Intermountain just made up a class of cars for more sales. Luckily more looking this morning did locate one car in this class, as seen here in the Canadian Freightcar Gallery;

http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=up340020&o=up

The model does seem to be a fairly faithful representation of the prototype. One issue appears to be that UP did lower the brakewheel with the removal of the rood walks, where the model retains the high brake wheel. All the ladders have been cut down on the prototype. That is a manageable alteration on the model. One issue with the model is that underframe is pointing the wrong direction. Note how the brake cylinder is pointing to the left where the hand brake is to the right. I should be tearing into the model soon to correct a few items.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/23 08:24 by funnelfan.

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Suggestion:  change "handle" to "Fumble".

A small in numbers class I think. Nice model though!

>Suggestion:  change "handle" to "Fumble".

I've also heard the term 'fondle' used...

Unless you plan on string lining a curve, I wouldn't worry too much about the way the body is on the underframe. :)

Just turn the base 180 if its a bother

spsunset Wrote:
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> Just turn the base 180 if its a bother

I initally did that, but found that the way that the triple valve is mounted dictates that orientation. Then I noticed the car ends were seperate pieces that were bowed out, so I removed them and will swap ends after making other changes such as lowering the brakewheel. The way the ends are keyed, it seems that the car was designed wrong or some part of the mould can be swapped backwards to make the car assemble the wrong way. I vaugely recall this was a problem when I assembled a Intermountain PS-1 undec kit before. So I removed the keyed mounting pin to be able to swap ends putting the brakewheel on the right end. Still more work to do, but it will be a accurate model of the prototype when done.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Very nice-looking car, even if their class wasn't that numerous on the UP.

Rich