30-Foot Box Car

The box car was a lot more difficult than the flat car or the gondola. It uses the same frame as the others, but the box structure was a little tough to figure out.

I found very little on the actual construction of wooden box cars, so I needed to make some assumptions about construction.

The first difficulty was trying to create the 1 x 3 boards for the walls. Scale lumber is available in that side, but it was going to be tedious laying that many boards on the side walls. The solution was to make a toothed die that would impresess a piece of 1/32 sheet with a 1 x 3 pattern.

This worked pretty well, but it is difficult to apply sufficient pressure to get a good impression; this technique needs some work.

After figuring out the wall problem, it was obvious that the walls would need some support. I determined that the framework used for a box car would be about the same as for a cattle car, so I drew one of these up.

This worked well. It kept the side panels flat and also gave a method for tying the whole box structure together. There was also a need to tie the roof to something.

The roof design was interesting. It is a four-beam de- sign that ties to the end and side walls. As mentioned, it is difficult to find images of box car construction, especially the roof. There are drawings in some of the reference books, but they are usually poor copies of railroad blue- prints and are difficult to decifer or scale. Once these problems were overcome, the assembly was fairly simple.

The doors were another interesting aspect. I wanted them to be functional. I finally made some hangers and stops from styrene angle and a runner from piano wire. They work amazingly well, but there is a lot of detail work that needs to be done. I have some pictures of cars from around the area that should help with future detailing.

The brake system on this car is probably the most accurate of the six cars I have built to date. Again, the Brunk book is very useful in this regard.