Ventilated Box Cars and a Stock Car

 It has been a while since my last post. I have been busy working on the railroad, however, and Donna, Socke & I took a vacation to Upton ME. Socke is the newest addition to the family. He is a 4 +/-year old German Shepard mix we adopted from the Brandywine Valley SPCA.

I digress, here are a couple of images of the latest rolling stock I have completed for the Delaware Central RR. They include Illinois Central Box Car kits from Alkem Scale Models (no longer in production), a reworked Alkem Scale Models ventilated bax car I inherited from Al Mueller's estate, and a reworked BTS covered stock car I inherited from the late Rhett Tyler.

The ventilated box cars are painted my favorite shade of slate blue, Model Masters Intermediate Blue (no longer available) with craft paint khaki tan roofs and Poly Scale Grimy Black hardware. The trucks are from Panamint Models with Reboxx wheels. The couplers are from San Juan Models. Car #490 on the far left of the images is the conversion from Al's car while cars 486 and 487 are the Alkem kits I built. In the drone view image, you can see that the brake staff on the car Al built is on a different side than the 2 ventilated box cars I built. I made the same mistake that Al made on one of my cars while building my 2 kits but chose an alternative construction remedy so that my 2 cars reflect the ICRR prototype.  

The covered stock car features scratch-built doors that Rhett built, and the trucks and wheels are the original ones Rhett installed on this car. I did remove the 2 brake wheels Rhett had installed on this car. One was TOO modern and extremely oversized and the other was too much of a variation from the original BTS kit for my liking as well as it did not measure up to Rhett's typical level of craftsmanship. I replaced these brake wheels with a BTS brake wheel and Tichy Train rachet mechanism to more closely match the 3 other BTS covered stock cars that I had previously built. I also removed the 2 end ladders Rhett had installed and used pieces of Northeastern Scale Lumber that I cut to replicate the end construction on the original BTS kit. The conversion is car number 135 in the images and the original cars I built from BTS kits are on the far right.