Updating the Kadee 40′ Route of the Eagles boxcar to the 1970’s

[peggyrothschild]

A friend gave me this car a few months ago in payment for some work I did on his layout. The car was built in 1959 so it didn’t fit into my 1954 era Bagnell Branch nor did the five digit number on the car fit into my ‘what if the branch survived’ in 1979 operations. Steve McVey posted some 40′ Mopac boxcar photos he’d taken and one of these Pullman built cars is in one of his shots. Still in the ‘Route of the Eagles’ as delivered paint. There’s also a shot of one on page 44 of the color guide by Jim Kinkaid but repainted by DeSoto shops in 1974. Kadee did a nice job on capturing the original lettering so I wanted to keep it as such but weather and renumber the car for the 1970’s.

Mopac had two series of these Pullman built cars 39015-39189 were renumbered 131905-132078; 39190-39214 became 132080-132104.

Here’s the model before…
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And Steve’s prototype shot of 132006 showing the roof walk and Pullman doors still in place.
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[bargetanika]

Did all of these cars have roller bearing trucks?

[peggyrothschild]

The MP drawings show Timken roller bearings.

Here’s some updates from today. Roof sprayed light gray and the ribs and roof given a light rust treatment. Sides airbrushed with Dullcote and roof brown to tone down the original lettering. I pulled off the red roof walk and replaced it with a Kadee galvanized one I had in the parts box.

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[peggyrothschild]

Added door scrapes on the right carbody panels using colored pencils and oil paints. You see some of these cars in flour service and spilled flour around the bottom of the door openings. I added this using white oil paint. I’ll replace the Kadee trucks one of these days as I don’t like the out of scale springs they come with. Also went down the vertical seams of the panels with the black pencil just to breakup the sides.

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Kadee car with a six digit number. I painted two patches on the sides for the new number and the Information below the road number. Decals from a number of Microscale sets and Mask Island.

The 6 digit numbering on the Mopac came about in the early 1960’s, the ACI labels were used by some roads until 1977, the U-1 yellow dots were added in March 1978 and stopped in 1981. The COTS started in 1972. All these decals were applied using Walthers Solva-set so you can add them directly to the Dullcoted surface. The COTS decal did start to come off so I thinned some Elmer’s white glue and painted the area were the decal would go and gently pressed the decal in place and the blotted up the thinned glue around the decal with a damp paper towel.

After the decals dry will add some weathering and a thin coat of Dullcote. [attachment=3:155tc2u5]image.jpeg[/attachment:155tc2u5]

[kenris]

Very nice!

[peggyrothschild]

@dickryker wrote:

Very nice!

Dick
Thanks, it was a pretty easy project.

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