Building a (small) fleet of Mount Blue Boxcars

[elwoodblues]

Ron, great idea using that mask and the results speak for themselves.
Trucks look good too.

Thanks Rick,

I kept the masks as I still have a couple more boxcars to build.

[elwoodblues]

Ron you can't get any better with the decals that that!! Great job and like the mask approach.

Thanks Larry,

The masks were well worth the effort as they ended up saving a lot of time with the decal placement.

[elwoodblues]

Ron,

Very well done on the decals. Look great!

Tom

Thanks Tom.

[elwoodblues]

Well This is it - The Final Update.

It's official, the boxcar project is complete, finished, nothing left to do. 




With the boxcars put back together the last step was to add the brake wheel and rod.





The frontal view.





A 3/4 view.





The entire 300-349 series boxcar fleet (built to date).

I still have 2 more Mount Blue boxcars to build, but it will probably be awhile before I get to them.

I would like to thank everyone who followed along and made comments.

Thanks for looking in.

[Jerry]

Ron great job on the fleet!

Jerry

[Rick]

Ron, congratulations on a fine looking fleet of boxcars.

[Larry C]

Ron nice fleet of boxcars. They look amazing, very well done!!!!

[Philip]

Nice work!

[elwoodblues]

Jerry, Rick, Larry and Philip,

Thanks for the kind comments and following along with this build.

[friscomike]

Howdy Ron,

The fleet of boxcars looks mighty fine.  Excellent work as usual.

Have fun,
mike

[deemery]

I think a lot of us have too few 'home road' cars.  As a rule of thumb, looking at some late 19th/early 20th century lists, 'home road' cars should be 50% of your fleet.  And that argues for constructing them in batches, like Ron has done.  Good work!

dave

[jbvb]

I think a lot of us have too few 'home road' cars.  As a rule of thumb, looking at some late 19th/early 20th century lists, 'home road' cars should be 50% of your fleet...

That varies depending on how much traffic both originates and terminates on the home road. That, in turn, depends on how large the home road is. After 1920 or so, the B&M terminated much more traffic than it originated, so the B&M freight car fleet existed largely to offset per-diem charges for all the incoming foreign cars. Post-WWII, as K air brakes were about to be outlawed, B&M had so much trouble getting one flat car back to its home shop they wrote it up for the employees' magazine. It hadn't been on B&M rails for 7 years IIRC.

[elwoodblues]

I think a lot of us have too few 'home road' cars.  As a rule of thumb, looking at some late 19th/early 20th century lists, 'home road' cars should be 50% of your fleet...

That varies depending on how much traffic both originates and terminates on the home road. That, in turn, depends on how large the home road is. After 1920 or so, the B&M terminated much more traffic than it originated, so the B&M freight car fleet existed largely to offset per-diem charges for all the incoming foreign cars. Post-WWII, as K air brakes were about to be outlawed, B&M had so much trouble getting one flat car back to its home shop they wrote it up for the employees' magazine. It hadn't been on B&M rails for 7 years IIRC.

In my case I model a narrow gauge line so the "home road" cars should be 100% unless there were cars purchased from another narrow gauge line that hasn't been re-lettered yet. 

[elwoodblues]

Howdy Ron,

The fleet of boxcars looks mighty fine.  Excellent work as usual.

Have fun,
mike

Thanks Mike, I had fun building them.

[deemery]

I think a lot of us have too few 'home road' cars.  As a rule of thumb, looking at some late 19th/early 20th century lists, 'home road' cars should be 50% of your fleet...

That varies depending on how much traffic both originates and terminates on the home road. That, in turn, depends on how large the home road is. After 1920 or so, the B&M terminated much more traffic than it originated, so the B&M freight car fleet existed largely to offset per-diem charges for all the incoming foreign cars. Post-WWII, as K air brakes were about to be outlawed, B&M had so much trouble getting one flat car back to its home shop they wrote it up for the employees' magazine. It hadn't been on B&M rails for 7 years IIRC.

In my case I model a narrow gauge line so the "home road" cars should be 100% unless there were cars purchased from another narrow gauge line that hasn't been re-lettered yet. 

But "used cars" are a great excuse for building and lettering kits 

dve