Page 86 - 38. MRH13-04-Apr2013
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Getting Real Column - 12
Central boxcar series IC 17000–18999, 2000 cars built by
American Car & Foundry in 1938–1939. Although generally of
1937 AAR standard design, they differed in having 10 feet, 4
inches inside height instead of 10 feet, and only having 40 tons
capacity. I chose to model one particular group in this series, IC
18400–18699, which had AAR trucks. This information, kindly
furnished by Richard Hendrickson, comes from the Illinois
Central freight diagram book. In 1953, 1971 of the original
2000 cars remained in service.
Those Athearn metal boxcars were pretty good representations
of 1937 AAR boxcars, though often factory-lettered for post-
war cars, as was this one. I fixed up the running board with
wood and repaired a damaged underframe (and added brake
rigging), to achieve a more contemporary standard of detail. I
added Athearn plastic AAR trucks and Kadee No. 58 couplers.
The original Athearn postwar car number and data block was
painted out, and I then used Jerry Glow’s fine Illinois Central
boxcar decals to letter the car for IC 18545 (16).
So there are some of my selections of signature freight cars for
some important foreign roads that operate on my layout. Your
foreign cars can be anything you want, but I think choosing
interesting and significant cars is a way to add interest to your
modeling as well as to your layout operation.
MRH-Apr 2013
