X31 & X32 Boxcar (Part 3) - PRR X31F Turtle-Roofs from Boswer

The X31F class boxcars were rebuilt during the early days of WWII with the center portions of the roof raised to allow taller vehicle loading, such as stacking inclined jeeps, etc.  These cars result in a very unique look in a regular freight train.  Nearly 700 cars were rebuilt into this form, they certainly did make their way around the country after the war for a number of years.

According to the 1950 ORER there were still 457 cars in XMR (Note: A & E) service with fixed automobile racks which could be retracted into the roofs in the 81200-81889 series.  In addition, 233 XM (Note: A & G) plain boxcars filled out the 81200-81889 series.  See Notes E and G for exact car numbers for which AAR class car desired.  This series filled number range, to-the-car, at the end of the X31A series below and butted right against the X41A series above.

PRR 81205 - XM (Plain boxcar)

PRR 81205, earlier Bowser X31F "Turtle Roof" boxcar, painted for general service

One of my older X31F kits built up as a general service boxcar.  The lettering for the "PENNSYLVANIA" seems incorrect compared to the 81348 (below) being a bit too large and tall, this seems to be fixed on the newer models.  Decals from National Car Shops/ex-Speedwitch should be able to fix this, but would require repatching the paint before replacing the road name.

PRR 81348 - XMR (Auto-Rack)

My newer swap-meet bought unbuilt kit shows the car stenciled with "Return when empty to PRR Canton Baltimore MD" assignment stencil, which gives the car's home station.  When the car returned to that station, the Freight Agent there would then assign the car to go to an auto assembly plant for loading.  These cars were called "boarded empties" and would be returned directly by fastest route to the named station.  Certain freight symbols were specifically indicated to handle high priority loads and these "boarded" empties to expedite their return for reloading.

Pennsy X31F class "Turtle Roof" automobile boxcar, newer Bowser kit version.

Looking up in the notes, the PRR 81348 shouldn't have the racks fitted, per what the door marking says, in 1950.  However, as the car's tare date shows the stenciled September 1948 date, it's possible the car was still assigned and fitted for automobile service with Evans racks.

B-end of Bowser X31F which needs the brake staff linkage fabricated.

Like the other Bowser kits from this era, I'll be needing to fabricate a brake staff and bell crank for the handbrake.

Underframe with modified air reservoir position on the basic underframe.

Underframe with air reservoir moved and turned 90 degrees from most other non-PRR cars.  I may install some lead strips between the centersills to help the Center-of-Gravity moment on the car.

In Closing

X31F PRR 81209 XM in a string of interchange cars at Kern Jct., Jan 4, 1953 TT/TO Ops LMRC

These cars of mine have provided some variation "Standard steel boxcar" look of the 1950s fleet at LMRC for most of 20-odd years in automobile service and auto-parts service in trains such as Santa Fe's 59, WGFX, and BK symbol freights, and regular transfers to the SP to connect to  the Bay Area from Bakersfield on Altamont West (AW), returning on Altamont East (AE) symbols with auto-parts.  Auto cars in general service showed up in other symbol freights such as: VXE, VXW, NCP, OCM, etc.

The newly built PRR 81348 and another sister X31F kit, yet to be assembled, will be available for service occasionally on the Jawbone Branch.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 1) - NP Correction in Era - Correcting Bowser NP X31 & X32 class models.

X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 2) - PRR X32A from Bowser Kits - Both plain and Evans Automobile cars from Bowser kits.  Also Automobile and Auto-Parts History.

X31 & X32 Boxcar (Part 2) - PRR X32As from Boswer

PRR 59505, an X32 class auto-boxcar

The PRR's double door X32A class cars are a classic choice for auto parts and automobile service across the nation.  I should note that the X32As didn't have end doors, but did have good size side doors for loading larger items.

Pennsy had the following cars in 1950 ORER:
351 X32As from the 58800-59449 series listed in Autoparts service with special auto-parts racks installed, AAR classed as XML.

50 cars of X32A were fitted with permanent auto racks, which could be raised to load as conventional boxcars. AAR classification XMR.

297 cars in the 58800-59449 series were downgraded to plain XM boxcars

59 cars in the 60112-60171-series were downgraded to plain XM boxcars

The ORER notes list the individual cars that differed from the rest of the group of cars, so modeling exact cars historically for service is possible, but not to the level of which auto-plant/parts pool they were in unless additional documents or photographs are used.  Many other auto cars were pulled from X32B, X38, X26C, and X31 subclasses.

A History of Automobile Car Operations

Many Southern Pacific divisions had freight symbols which moved autoparts in established agreed routes which involved splitting the ownership of the assigned cars between several railroads by mileage of the route offered.  

SP North Coast Perishable with an automobile and auto-parts block, including a PRR X32, at the headend pass through Bealville.

These cars often would be sent to the auto parts plants to receive special racks or holding fixtures to hold the needed parts.  Some years the new models of automobiles would require adjustments to these racks before the new production could begin.  Therefore it was common on these routes to see mixtures of double and single door cars from multiple railroads, which were part of the same "pool" all moving the required parts to the assembly plants.

The automobile boxcars, which moved finished autos weren't as tightly restricted in which autos they could carry or where they would be taking them, but instead they would move around the nation to where the orders for the autos were.  Obviously some railroads would have their automobile boxcars in more tightly assigned service to support the auto assembly plants they serviced.

SP Autoparts & Automobile Operations

The Southern Pacific served automobile assembly plants in the Los Angeles area and San Francisco Bay Area.  Assembled autos from other assembly plants were also shipped into the SP served areas.

SP 64210 unloading new '56 Chevies at Sonoma depot, CA in 1955-56 - Troy Marmaduke collection

In the photo above we can see the two autos stacked on the right side of this SP 40ft Auto car have been unloaded from the Evans auto-rack and at least one more car is still on the rack to the left, with the shiny bumper showing above and to the left of the man.  This is at the Sonoma depot freight platform deck, with the ramp well used in this case to get the Chevies down to ground level.  This would be common for smaller towns to get freight to customers which did not have their own spurs.  Everyone would go down to the station to get their goods, even the local car dealer!

SP 67789, a Walthers single sheath DD boxcar, making a delivery to King Lumber, Bakersfield CA, LMRC circa 2018 photo.

Automobile boxcars moved not only automobiles and auto parts, but extra "automobile" cars could be seen moving pretty much any over-size covered load anywhere across the country.  Some loads requiring double doors or even end doors.  Downgraded "Automobile" cars on the SP didn't often loose their stenciling, but would be found in finished lumber service or other assignments.

"HH Goods"?

The Santa Fe Warbonnet article on the Wreck of the SCX at Cajon from 1949, or so, listed a consist with what each of the cars were carrying.  Several of the 50-odd cars that were listed showed "HH Goods", which were household goods.  These cars were not hauling goods for resale, but instead these were the Allied and Mayflower moving vans of the 1940s and early 1950s, but on rails.  If you wanted to move your family across the country, freight forwarders or other companies could be contracted to ship your goods.

A Family Story

SP Auto boxcar with "rough freight" or maybe "HH Goods" stuff at Owenyo - Rich McCutchan - owensvalleyhistory sp_narrow_g42c_sml

Recently, an on-line comment I read in a forum from Scott L Murdock. "My father started in SP’s engineering department in Ogden Utah. His first job transfer was to Sparks Nevada. SP provided him with a two auto boxcar for the move. He loaded his car in one end and furniture with belongings in the other end. When the boxcar got to Sparks the straps holding the auto had come loose. Luckily the car didn’t start rolling back and forth destroying his belongings!" Scott L Murdock

So there's plenty of options for waybills for "automobile" cars to be used for in our model railroad operations and even local assignments where automobiles might not be unloaded.  

Furniture Cars

A Seaboard car at LMRC stenciled for "Automoble-Furniture" service. 2011, Jason Hill photo

Some roads that didn't really supply automobile assembly plants or routes where auto parts cars would be supplied into a pool, such as the south-eastern US, would stencil their auto cars for "furniture" service, or even dual letter their cars for both.

Pennsy X32A "Automobiles" Cars

Well, enough on what we can use the auto cars for, lets get back to looking at a couple of Pennsy cars from Bowser kits.  

PRR 59505 - "Unassigned"  Car

The 50 foot X32As boxcars that I've picked up over the years are from Bowser and most are lettered for PRR.  I'll be looking at two examples of the class in this post.

Weathered PRR 59505 X32 class auto-boxcar from Bowser kit.

This is one of my earlier acquired cars.  The lettering on the kit shows it's from a Bowser production of the early 2000s I think.  The lettering is pretty good.  The spelled out road name is fairly close to Pennsy lettering style.

In the future, if I decide to do some upgrades, I should probably add a Evans Automobile Rack stripe to the door along with the chain tubes below the floor to put this car in general automobile loading.  This would also allow the car to roam west of the PRR with special large loads, such as aircraft parts to California from eastern sub-assembly plants.

PRR - "Assigned" Car

I picked up this model from a swap meet a few years back.  This car is from a newer Bowser production which has the lettering to assign the car to auto-parts/automobile plant at Grand Rapids, Michigan (Code "PD") included on the basic pad printing on the model.  

PRR 58977 with "Automobiles" lettering and return routing to "PD" placarding.

The car's tare date is showing 1945, so I'll probably be retaring the car for the late 1940s and early 1950s era.  The builder of this car did some rather overall airbrush weathering, which lacks much character that I like in my weathering.  So I'll probably do some adjustments to the weathering on this car when I have done the other tweaks to the car.

Missing handbrake staff, normal on all Bowser boxcar kits from 1990s and 2000s.

The older Bowser kits are missing the hand brake staff, which needs to be fabricated from wire and should have a clevis bell crank on the bottom, next to the coupler.

Underframe of a typical Bowser X32.  Many PRR X31/32s should have reservoir relocated.

Many of these kits I have built over the years have the centersill filled with weight to improve the car's center-of-gravity.  This model had damage to one coupler box cover and screw being knocked out.  It was pretty easy to fix that without much trouble.

In Closing

I'll probably do a few chalk marks on both these X32As to finish them up.  This series of X31/32 series boxcar blog posts will probably be 5-6 parts as I work my way through the various PRR sub-classes and construction details.

A Pennsy "Turtle Roof" X31F in the ATSF-SP interchange track at Bakersfield from TT/TO session in 2018, at LMRC.

If there's interest, I might do some blog posts on other automobile service cars that are easily found in the modeling community.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 1) - NP X31 & X32 from Bowser

SP 65ft Mill Gondolas (Part 1) - Overview

Tonight I will talk about Athearn's R-T-R 65ft mill gondolas.

The Prototypes

The 65ft mill gondola with drop ends started being built just before WW2.  The drop end doors were fitted for carrying loads longer than 65ft that were in high demand in the steel industry for structural shapes and other long items from the "rust belt" during the early part of WW2.  These cars were also built unusually narrow, around 8 feet wide.  As the length of the cars grew, the standard clearance plates for curves meant the cars also had to get narrower to be able to fit around the same curve a 10' wide 40ft box car could without sideswiping any track side obstacles.

PRR 440703, a G26A, is one of the Pennsy RR's huge fleet of 2600 65ft mill gondolas.

Above is one of the PRR G26/G26A cars that Athearn produced.  These cars run so well I am happy to have some minor differences in the ends of the model car compared to the 2600 prototype cars of this type that the PRR owned!  These models are also reasonably accurate for many other prototypes as well.

In this post we will focus on the four classes of SP cars, totaling 305 cars.  SP bought their cars to cater to heavy lumber industry interests in Northern California and Oregon and also some of their other customers around the system including 50 cars for the Texas & New Orleans.

G-70-2, 15 cars blt 1941

G-70-4, SP 40 cars & T&NO 50 cars blt 1942

G-70-6, 100 cars blt 1950

G-70-9, 100 cars blt 1953

The Models

First produced around 2005-2006, these are one of my favorite models in terms of mechanical setup.  In 10 years of regular running at the club of nearly 20 of these cars, I don't believe there's been a single car derailed from a cause I can track to the mechanicals of the car itself.

Top view and interior of Athearn 65ft mill gondola with drop end doors and steel floor.

The mechanical construction of these models is rather unique in HO scale.  They have a die-cast metal underframe and floor.  The sides and drop end doors are cast plastic,  While these cars only weigh about 3.25oz with all-metal wheelsets (Intermountain), they have a Center-of-Gravity test of 120 degrees and a rollablity of 1%.  Yes, the car can be nearly inverted on its back and still right itself to its wheels!

Underbody of Athearn 65ft mill gondola - The whitish marks are chips in the paint revealing the cast metal floor.  Also notice  the areas behind the 'fishbelly' sides is not packed with weight!

This combination of VERY low CG and better than average rolling qualities means, according to the LMRC club standard that the car meets the adjusted weight standards.  In a future post I will talk more about these standards and how we quantify them.  It is enough to say here that mixed car type trains of over 100 cars can easily be operated without any issues when cars are properly built and adjusted.  The couplers on these models were replaced with standard Kadee No.5 head, whisker-type couplers.

SP 160550 - G-70-9 

This was the first car of the G-70-9 class.  For some reason so far Athearn has only issued painted models for the G-70-9s built in 2-53.  Hopefully in the future they will make some of the earlier class cars as well.

SP 160550, G-70-9, Built 1953

SP 94296 - G-70-4

To round out my other 65ft SP mill gondola cars I have redecalled two models to backdate them for G-70-4 and G-70-6.  I decided not to number any of my cars for the G-70-2, as only being 15 cars,

SP 94296, G-70-4 Built 1942

The SP 94296 I wanted to try a new weathering technique on.  I had the chance to collect some powdered rust.  As this car would have seen heavy service during WW2 and in total about 11 years of service I decided to try some rust powder.  The inside of the car has steel floor plates as well.  I tried first dusting on the powder like chalks, then over-spaying with dullcote.  However like most chalk weathering and dullcote the sealing coat tends to dull the effect of the chalks.  Also the car body being nearly rust color originally as well didn't help!

I tried a different technique then.  Spray the inside of the car with a fairly heavily with dullcote and then pour some rust powder into the wet clear dullcote.... using an old brush I quickly swooshed the powder around the interior and the lower sides sticking it into the tacky paint.  This worked perfectly and ended up giving a large variety of colors from the same rust powder.

SP 160023 - G-70-6

SP 160588, a G-70-9, before I renumbered it to become SP 160023, a G-70-6.

The SP 160588 was the number on my third G-70-9.  Deciding that I wanted to backdate it to a G-70-6, I redecalled it as the SP 160023, built in 1950.

SP 160023, G-70-6 - The car's been renumbered, but I've not yet redecalled the tare year or class number.

This model was lightly weathered with a mix of PollyScale paints roughly the same color as the car body.  I use similar colors when I want to knock down the brilliance of the white lettering on a car that has been around a while, but other weathering such as rust hasn't really started to set in yet.  I also like doing a coat of road grime and dust along the lower car body to varying levels.  I also tend to use slightly different colors for this as these cars will have been coming from different parts of the country and seen yet more variety of climates and weathering conditions on previous trips.

In Closing

That will wrap it up this time for these very nice operating 65ft Mill Gondolas.  When I get some other photos together of the removable loads for these cars, such as the one above, I'll make another posting.

Jason Hill

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