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Getting Real Column - 11
A relatively small railroad for which I’ve chosen just one signa-
ture car is Boston & Maine. In 1953, their freight roster con-
tained only 5300 cars, although 63% of them were boxcars. My
choice was their version of the 1923 ARA XM-1 single-sheathed
boxcar, to which they applied plate steel ends, making a dis-
tinctive appearance. There were 2000 of these cars, built by
Standard Steel Car Company in 1929 and 1930, and they sur-
vived well; more than 1900 of them were still in service in
1953. For more information and photos, you can consult Pat
Wider’s article in
Railway Prototype Cyclopedia
(Vol. 18, 2009,
pages 1–113). My model of one of these cars was built from
Sunshine resin kit 91.6 (14).
I will conclude with the Illinois Central, another fleet size in
the top 15 and a railroad with which the SP had a friendly con-
nection at New Orleans. I have always liked single-sheathed
15: The model, built from a Sunshine resin kit, repre-
sents one of 1000 cars built for Illinois Central in 1927.
In 1953, 941 of these cars remained in service, though
being renumbered to 16000–16975.
15
boxcars and there were still a great many of them running
in the early 1950s. One of my IC cars is such a boxcar, from
a 1000-car order built in 1927 with massive fishbelly under-
frames, steel Dreadnaught ends, and Youngstown steel doors.
Their original numbers were 176000–176999. Around World
War II, they were renumbered in to the 16000–16975 series,
of which 941 remained in service in 1953. These cars are good
representatives of the late days of construction of single-
sheathed box cars on American railroads (15).
My model of this car was built from Sunshine resin kit 57.2. I
acquired it from John Golden, and at some point I will renum-
ber it into the 16000 series. I may do so with the same expe-
dient used by the Illinois Central on some of the cars in this
group, to simply paint out the “7” in the car number.
The other IC car I will mention is an upgraded Athearn metal
kit from many years ago. I chose it to depict a car from Illinois
16: This Illinois Central model represents a car built
for IC in 1939. It began life as an Athearn metal car kit,
which was upgraded and relettered to reflect its proto-
type body style. Fresh numbers for car capacity reflect
a reweighing of the car.
16
MRH-Apr 2013
