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The final group of cars is the 76500 – 76999 series. It appears

from the freight car diagram that American Car and Foundry

built this group of cars. This group of cars were the first to have

the tabbed sides at the bottom of the car. Also introduced at

this time was the Viking roof. This roof was also used by other

railroads and is not specific to the Erie. In addition this group of

cars grew by 1” to have an inside height of 9’-4”.

This gets us to the 76500-76999 series. This group of cars was

built to the 1932 ARA design, which introduced the standard-

ization of boxcar design. Sunshine models produced this car as

kit # 21.11. The Sunshine models are now out of production,

however they may be able to be picked up at a swap meet. I

also believe that these cars were manufactured by Atlas at one

time and may also be available at swap meets.

The last of the Erie cars with Buckeye ends and Viking roofs are

the 78000-78499 series. This group of cars has a 10’-0” interior

height and follow the ARA 1937 design. Sunshine models has

also produced these cars as a craftsman style kit. Since I have

several of them I did not bother to include making them as a

part of this article.

Erie Railroad Boxcars, p1 - 4

Erie Box Car

Sides

Roof

Ends

Series

8'-8” IH 9'-3” / 9'-4” IH Radial

Viking Dreadnaught

Buckeye

75000 – 74999

x

75500 – 75999

x

76000 – 76499

x

76500 – 76999

x

6A. This matrix summarizes the sides, roof, and ends

for each series of Erie boxcar. As you produce each car

in a specific series, use this matrix to determine the

proper combination of side, roof, and end.

Now that the project is completed it is time to evaluate the

entire exercise. There are several lessons and conclusions that I

have reached, and believe that it is important to share.

1. I under took too large of a project. I thought that I could

build quality models from masters and that it would be rela-

tively simple. The truth of the matter is that I should have fo-

cused on building one of the series of cars and honed my skills

on it. I tried to eat too large of an elephant.

2. I need to develop a better method of controlling my castings.

Just pouring the material into the mold did not give enough

control over the thickness of the casting. Some of the castings

had a convex surface that had to be sanded down. While I was

reasonably successful at doing this, it was extra work. This ex-

tra sanding also made some of the fitting of joints a bit dicey.

This caused problems in putting the pieces together to build

the cars.

I would rate the castings at about 80% of those provided by

Sunshine or Westerfield. I had hoped to do better.

3. The material that I used to cast the parts had too quick of a

set time. I should have purchased a casting material that had a

longer set time. Because of the quick set time I was not able to

use my jigsaw method of removing air bubbles from the cast-

ings like I was able to when making the molds. A longer set

time would have allowed for this process at a minimum.

4. I should have taken time to sketch or draw up the basic di-

mensions that I needed, as I did for the tab spacing. I discovered

that I had some errors in dimensions. The cars are a little short in

length. Planning ahead would have eliminated this problem.

Lessons Learned

index

contents

MRH-Apr 2013