I'm starting a new series... I know, I know, you say... what about all the series you've started and not finished? Well, like model railroads, this blog will never be done! I've hit on some of the foreign cars already, PRR X31/X32 series boxcars, WWII War Emergency Boxcar, 36ft Fowler Boxcars - NC&StL, NP Double-sheath Boxcars, and Milwaukee "Rib-Side" boxcars. I'll probably done one on some basics of things like X29 and B&O M-53 "Wagon Top" boxcars. So while those previous blogs were on specific common types, I'm going a bit more a field with this series of "Common Foreign Freight Cars", into prototypes that I could see coming through the territory I model, or just about anyone models as interchanged traffic. These cars would be ones that "could show up anywhere" and wouldn't be bad to help 'fill out your roster' with that were either common prototypes, or standard designs which are available in model kit/RTR form (aka, easy to model).
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| The updated ACY 1295 with chalk marks using the white and gray GellyRoll pens. |
Back in the late 1990s, I picked up some wood-sheathed boxcars. These came from the first series of Proto2000-LifeLike as R-T-R boxcar models, which was very new at the time. Thankfully they didn't need much work to bring up to standards. While they look similar to the modern Rapido B-50-15/16s, these are not SP prototype.
Roster 1950
Here's some roster info that I was able to find on-line. The Mather cars were built with standardized parts and design. It gives some idea the size of the Mather fleet and also some of the variations in car height, which is new information to me.
7'8" IH cars, P2K models correct
ACY 1250-1299 (50 cars)
C&EI 400-500? (100 cars)
CIM 8000-8454 (453 cars)
IN 2000-2099 (100 cars)
MRS 7500-7599 (24 cars) - 50% total roster of MRS in 1950.
PH&D 1506-1522 (11 cars), 7'10" IH version though, so 2" taller.
8'5" IH cars, taller than P2K models, Sunshine Resin made these (6.1-6.4)
ACY 1100-1199 & 2200-2149 (242 cars), but these are 8'5" IH cars (why P2K lettered my car in this series is weird.)
MWR 1201-1275 (25 cars)
TC 7751-7850 (96 cars)
9'11" IH cars (Sunshine kits 103.1-103.3)
ACY 1200-1220 (21 cars)
MWR 1276-1300 (25 cars)
10'3" IH cars (Sunshine 102.4-103.10)
ACY 3001-3149 (149 cars)
GM&O 7500-7524 (25 cars)
MRS 8000-8024 (25 cars) - other 25 cars in their fleet
Data from Randy's Layout Blog on Mather Boxcars
It seems that with these differences in height, Proto2000's research in the 1990s were not holding to as high a standard as they were claiming at the time. Resulting a couple of the models not really being as accurate as we have come to expect 25 years later. So I will be doing a brief overview of four examples from the 1990s production.
ACY 1195
I have to move this car's number to 1295 to be in the correct series for this height car, see roster above. I don't know why Proto2000 would make this kind of error, but research in the pre-internet 1990s was much more challenging than these days.
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| ACY 1195, Mather standard boxcar |
The ACY car doesn't have heavy weathering, but mostly just some running grime along the lower carside. I put on some paper routing cards and a few chalk marks. Tare date is CR 2-47.
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| The updated ACY 1295 with chalk marks using the white and gray GellyRoll pens. |
In September, 2023, as I was finishing up the Accurail Fowler kitbash, I decided to go ahead and renumber this car to the correct number series for the car's height. The NC&StL decal set from K4 Decals is very similar in font style and height to the ACY car, so I scratched off the "1" with my No.11 Xacto blade and applied the "2" from the decal set. I think this photo was before I slightly toned down the new decal, but in the end it matched very nicely on the car.
FtDDM&S 14007
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| FtDDM&S 14007, Mather standard boxcar |
The car has some light chalk marks and some board highlighting with grime. A couple routing cards are also placed on the carside. This car is tare dated for CR 3-55, but is preceded by "MSSCO" which I think is the Mather leasing company shops, as some of these cars were leased. This scheme might not be prototypical in 1950, given the 1950 roster and the tare date on the model... I guess I can hope that it was a lease that started after 1950.
TC 7702
The prototype roster shows these cars should be 9" taller. Meh, oh well.
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| TC 7702, Mather standard boxcar |
I went into more chalk marks on this TC car, marking loading tallies to the left of the door. I generally applied a moderate grimy weathering on the sides of this car. Additional chalk marks around the reporting marks at the left end of the car. The car's tare date is for MSSCO CR 9-47, so again, I'm guessing another leased car.
PH&D 1509
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| PH&D 1509, Mather standard boxcar |
The PH&D 1509, I kept pretty clean. They only had 11 cars!, so again I unfortunately found a model that didn't have many cars, so this is another "rare" car to see, you're not going to have a whole train of these. It looks like some one over lubrication has been applied to the door mechanism. Minimal chalk marks are applied. Tare date is for MSSCO CR 4-46. A couple of routing cards are also applied to the car side.
In Closing
I know single-sheathed foreign cars did still come to the Jawbone in the early 1950s, because of the photo of SP 3237 at Bartlett with a single-sheath Seaboard car. While not a Mather car, these cars will fill some holes in my foreign boxcar pool to bring the look of single-sheath boxcars, albeit with rather rare small-fleet railroads. I should also note that these cars are rated as 40-ton capacity cars.
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| C&NW 32833, a standard Mather single deck stock car by Proto2000. |
The Mather cars are interesting in that they also produced a large number of cars with the same standard structure as stock cars, both double and single deck cars. In 1996, LifeLike-Proto2000 produced the stock car kits and I picked up a couple of them. I was also happy I picked up a couple of the boxcar versions when they came out. I think there are a couple other railroads that I didn't get.
Walthers took over the Life-Like line and the Proto2000 tooling. Between the two owners of the tooling they have gone on to produce several more railroad schemes of these cars, including: Illinois Northern, Chicago & Illinois Midland, Chicago & Eastern Illinois, & Manufactures Railway Supply.
Jason Hill
Related Articles:
Randy's Layout Blog - Mathers Boxcars - MRS (green), M&WR (yellow), & CIM (yellow) Proto2000 models. Randy goes into more depth on the mechanical standards and specifications of the prototypes.
Chalk Marks - A New Method - Adding the extremely common prototype 'weathering' to steam-diesel freight cars.
X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 1) - NP, A Correction In Era - 1960+ Double Door 40 & 50ft
X31 & X32 Boxcar (Part 2) - PRR X32As from Boswer - Double Door, 50ft
X31 & X32 Boxcar (Part 4) - PRR X31As from Boswer - Single door, 40ft
ATSF 129782 - Bx38 - Weathering with Pencils & Acrylics - WWII War Emergency Boxcar by IMRC
Weathering NP 11661 - A Rapido Double-sheath Boxcar - A standard design used by NP in large numbers.
36ft Fowler Boxcars - NC&StL 15337 (Part 2) Details & Decalling - Accurail's plastic kit (and bashing)
Milwaukee "Rib-Side" boxcars - Accurail and Rib-Side models, the 'clasic' steel car design, unique to Milwaukee Road.
Freight Car Index Page - Overview of all my freight car modeling and kitbashing articles.
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