Intermountain 50' Gunderson high cube double door boxcar announced

[cjm413]

Ugh, whoops... I meant X71s.

If Athearn keeps selling the Berwick cars with the wrong PS doors instead of the correct Youngstown doors, it's only a matter of time before I find one for a cheap enough price to experiment with...

[cv_acr]

Yeah well that's the thing, they really aren't Berwick cars anyway. It's actually more like a P-S with extra rivets that shouldn't be there.

Ends roof and doors are all P-S features, and except for the corner rivets there isn't a single feature remotely similar to any Berwick car.

[Missaberoad]

Yeah well that's the thing, they really aren't Berwick cars anyway. It's actually more like a P-S with extra rivets that shouldn't be there.

Ends roof and doors are all P-S features, and except for the corner rivets there isn't a single feature remotely similar to any Berwick car.

Chris were these a copy of an HO car? (like the Athearn/Bachmann "Railbox") or a uniquely N scale fabrication?

Would be nice to see a proper 50' Berwick boxcar in N...

[cjm413]

Chris were these a copy of an HO car? (like the Athearn/Bachmann "Railbox") or a uniquely N scale fabrication?

Would be nice to see a proper 50' Berwick boxcar in N...

MDC's "Berwick" car is probably best described as the half-@$$ed step-brother of their N scale PS car (which they did offer in HO, but without the removable doors)

The Athearn Failbox is a completely different cluster£μ©€ of an ACF/FMC/Fruehauf-built car.

[Rossford Yard]

Always happy for new product that excites my fellow N scalers......that said, I always wonder if so many box cars sell?

In my case, I bought a box car load of box cars when I was early in N, similar to these 50 footers, and when I checked the rolling stock fleet of the proto, found the actual number of boxes going down. Sold some off, and started collecting flats, tanks, gons, covered hoppers and the like. Did buy 60 foot HC and 86 ft HC boxes when they were new to N prototypes. 

Will probably never need to buy a 50 foot box car again, because I don't nit pick the details (like doors and dreadnought ends) When running, they all look about the same to me (although plug doors are used in certain types of service, vs general box.  In fact, still trying to sell off surplus.

Guess I don't know the market, but am guessing both newbs and experienced modelers buy more box cars than would most likely be prototypically correct, at least from maybe 1985 on..

[squirrelhunter]

Not to drift the thread too far, but...

While MDC tooling is being discussed, is the 50' exterior post peaked roof car with the swapable doors a PS 5277? I have been hunting around the internet trying to figure out what the prototype is and that the best I have been able to figure out.

If it is a 5277, does anyone know if these were ever built with a plug door?

[cjm413]

Not to drift the thread too far, but...

While MDC tooling is being discussed, is the 50' exterior post peaked roof car with the swapable doors a PS 5277? I have been hunting around the internet trying to figure out what the prototype is and that the best I have been able to figure out.

If it is a 5277, does anyone know if these were ever built with a plug door?

Both the PS (without the "waffles") and the Berwick car (with the PS roof, etc) have removable doors.   I haven't measured either of them to definitively say whether they are Plate C 5277 cuft cars vs. Plate B 5077 cuft cars.

Re: cars with plug doors, Berwick built some cars with plug doors for MEC (later to CN), CV, and BAR.  CN rebuilt some of their ex-RBOX PS and Berwick 5277's with new 12' plug doors.

[squirrelhunter]

cjm, thank for the info! I can grab my digital calipers tonight to take some measurements of the shell, if you can pointy me to some key dimensions that can clear up the difference between a 5077 and a 5277. I'd guess the interior height is the big one?

[cjm413]

cjm, thank for the info! I can grab my digital calipers tonight to take some measurements of the shell, if you can pointy me to some key dimensions that can clear up the difference between a 5077 and a 5277. I'd guess the interior height is the big one?

5277: 11' IH
5077: 10'6" IH

[jagged ben]

Always happy for new product that excites my fellow N scalers......that said, I always wonder if so many box cars sell?

In my case, I bought a box car load of box cars when I was early in N, similar to these 50 footers, and when I checked the rolling stock fleet of the proto, found the actual number of boxes going down. Sold some off, and started collecting flats, tanks, gons, covered hoppers and the like. Did buy 60 foot HC and 86 ft HC boxes when they were new to N prototypes. 

Will probably never need to buy a 50 foot box car again, because I don't nit pick the details (like doors and dreadnought ends) When running, they all look about the same to me (although plug doors are used in certain types of service, vs general box.  In fact, still trying to sell off surplus.

Guess I don't know the market, but am guessing both newbs and experienced modelers buy more box cars than would most likely be prototypically correct, at least from maybe 1985 on..

First of all ... You're right.  I keep trying to tell myself 'I've got enough boxcars, my trains need more other types of cars, and then I keep buying or pre-ordering more boxcars anyway.

The thing is, in N scale (I believe) boxcar models are disproportionately available compared to the prototype.  (They're easier to manufacturer in many ways, no doubt).    And I buy a car because that car interests me and fits my modeling era, not because I'm trying to fill a hole in a roster, so I end up buying those cars.  When putting together trains I just end up re-using the same hoppers and tank cars and flat cars more often, and rotating the boxcars in and out.  If I were on a tighter budget or a stricter operational scheme with specific roster needs then I would probably have to do something more concrete to address my excess boxcar collection. 

I really do need some more gondolas in my manifests though.   

[nkalanaga]

In many areas foreign road boxcars would be more varied than raw numbers would indicate.  Most tank cars are leased, so it would be common for the same ones to show up regularly, and if the flatcars are carrying repeat shipments to or from a few customers, the same roads, if not the same cars, could well dominate. 

At least through the 70s, many boxcars were still "free runners", so could spend months wandering before going home, and the variety seen in a train would be quite high.

So, having "too many" boxcars could be prototypical for your location, if it provides a wide variety, rather than just a lot of copies of a few cars.

[squirrelhunter]

So I took some quick measurements late last night, and I'm not entirely sure if I did them correctly, so feel free to tell me what I may be doing wrong...

So I couldn't fit my calipers inside the shell, but I was able to cut a strip of paper to length and measured the height between interior top of the car side and the lip where the shell sits on the frame, and got 9'7". I want to redo this, but it was the best I could in do a hurry last night.

I also measured the height of one of the side panels at 10'2". So allowing for iffy measurement by me, and the fact that 6 scale inches is .0375 real inches, maybe the MDC car is a 5077?

[nkalanaga]

Given that the roof and floor are both thicker than scale, I wouldn't put much faith in inside measurements. 

A better measure would be the overall height of the car, if it sits at the right height.  Failing that, the two cars SHOULD have different height doors, so that measurement would also be useful.

[cjm413]

Given that the roof and floor are both thicker than scale, I wouldn't put much faith in inside measurements. 

A better measure would be the overall height of the car, if it sits at the right height.  Failing that, the two cars SHOULD have different height doors, so that measurement would also be useful.

That's part of the reason why I haven't had the motivation to measure the MDC cars...

From a big picture perspective, there are probably more visible differences in overall height due to jacked-up bolsters, bodies that are too short to overcompensate for jacked-up bolsters, bodies that are too tall despite the jacked-up bolsters, etc than any visible differences between a 5077 cuft car and a 5277 cuft car.

Also, any MDC Berwick cars that are being used as models of Berwick cars (rather than a potential starting point for an early PS car with 12 side posts, e.g. PC X75, vs 10 side posts) are also going to need a new diagonal panel or X-panel roof to be correct (or less wrong)

[Mark5]

I'm probably missing something, but assuming that we have access to plans for the 5077 and 5277 wouldn't it be simpler to measure (on the model) the distance from the bottom of the sill to the roof line and compare to the drawings?

I agree that the innder height (IH) is useless in this context.

I know that certain MTL models are compressed, but it seems most manufacturers tried to make the molds to scale - not caring about ride height or overall height.

Mark