To go in the Hotshot with the Mail car… like bread n butter. I started with a B’mann 20 foot express boxcar lettered for the Pennsylvania Union Line. It was short enough for what I wanted to do – and more importantly, it was here.
Then dug around until I found some pix of a New York Central wood milk car in my files.
Okay… We have a prototype, sort of. We’ll just ignore the passenger trucks and fishbelly frame, for now. The narrow end platform, handrail, and evaporator piping were easy enough.
Step and an extra grab were easy too. It will get reefer doors when I find cheap enough ones.-- at the moment they seem to want as much for the 4 doors as a whole car!
A quicky paint job with ‘straw’ and ‘brown oxide’, and renumber to #669 by the simple expediency of painting over the final 9. I left the “Pennsylvania” for now because the decals I have are white
I think the car end looks pretty good. Yes, I need to add the train lines yet, and switch over to double hooks on the couplers. The Barber trucks will get fitted with Ozark leaf springs and the “roller bearings” carved off and replaced with plain bearing lube doors
Still, not too awful bad for maybe 2 hours total of farting around on a snowy day.
