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In the Winter 2003 issue of ‘The Eagle’ Joe Altnether authored an article on modeling three HO scale 1960 era boxcars. The first part of his article covered modeling a 50′ MP car numbered 98065 with a plug door and the large lettering for Missouri Pacific and Cushion Car. Details West made this car as their kit BC-600 and offered it in several road names in the 600 series. Athearn bought the Details West line of kits and still offers them today RTR as kit 91268. While the kit is close to the MP prototype, to be entirely accurate one has to remove the rivets on the sides and re-scribe the panels as the MP cars were welded. I initially thought this was a recipe for disaster but in reality the plastic is soft and I found this to be very easy to do with an Exacto chisel blade. After the rivets are off the sides and plug door I wet sanded the sides to remove any that I may have not entirely been removed with the chisel blade.

To re-scribe the side panels I took a small needle and put it in my pin vice. I first re-scribed the top horizontal line on the sides and the bottom one as well so there was a logical point for the panels to stop. I then used drafting tape to mark each of the vertical lines on the tape. Joe points out “…beginning at the door, scribe the first weld line 3′ 6″ from the door with all subsequent weld lines being 3′ apart”. I cut back the bottom of the car body 3′ to match the prototype and glued a piece if Evergreen 4″ x 4″ HO stock to the four corner and attached A-Line metal stirrups. Intermountain ladders and end brake details were added next. Joe used a Plano Apex walkway set but I decided to model the car with the roof walk removed. I painted the car with Tru-Color MKT freight car brown with a couple drops of Eagle gray and DRGW gold to lighten up the color. I then used Tamiya Clear with Tamiya thinner to prepare the sides for decals.

Microscale decal set 87-1416 was used to decal the car. I’m going to weather the car for service in 1979-80 so will use different methods to so a car after it had been in service some 18 years and then put down a fresh panel of paint where I will decal it being renumbered into the MP 779800-779999 series.

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