So with all this boxcab building you guys got me stirred up for several reasons. For starters I needed something to pull Ralphie the Railscale around when visiting other layouts and I kinda want a whimsical train to run. Ric Golding has hooked up his boxcab to Ralphie numerous times at various RR’s and it looked good with Ralphie. I also want something that I can run track power and battery power as well and a boxcab seemed like a good testing ground. However the main reason is I had a Thomas face left over from gutting Percy to build Utility and with a boxcab I can run whimsical or I could remove the face and run prototypical. If this all sounds like bullcrap it is…I just needed something different and fun to build and yes the boxcab threads got me looking at pictures…LOTS OF PICTURES…However I found nothing that blew my dress up on the prototypical side to model but I remember being told in one of the threads that with boxcabs there are no rules so anything is legal! OK… my challenge is to use what I have on hand and work from that. The majority of this thread is just pictures cause they can say 1,000 words.
I started with an Aristo Track cleaning car (shell) I used the frame/trucks to build Ralphie so it must be a calling? The motor block is a Bachmann that I had. I played around with numerous configurations and came up with one that I liked for the window and door cut outs. The block with the lead in it (1st picture) was the track cleaning block. Also note I shaved 3/8" off the roof overhang and used it too fill the front and rear gaps at the bottom of the shell. Now I need some side truck frames and for them I used the USA truck frames I had left over from building my superliners. I had cut up the side frames from 2 different trucks but had the main frames left over and the brake cylinders from the other trucks.
Chapter 2
Note the track cleaning block became the radiator and the fan was from the GP 9 I molested to make the F40 
