An old Shake ’n’ Take project, Part 3

This freight car build is the 2015 Shake ’n’ Take project, as they are known, from that year’s “Prototype Rails” meet at Cocoa Beach, Florida. The prototype is a 40-foot double-door box car of the Rock Island; I showed a representative prototype photo in the first post in this series (here’s a link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/an-older-shake-n-take-project.html  ). 

Participants in these projects get a car body, kit parts, and a full set of replacement parts, but I was a late registrant and only got part of the project contents. Thus I am using somewhat different parts and occasionally a different approach, but am trying to follow the original kit directions. Ways to acquire those directions were given in the previous post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/an-old-shake-n-take-project-part-2.html ).

In the previous post in the series (just cited above), I showed completion of the “heavy” work of cutting the body and replacing the car ends. Now I undertook adding details to the car body. 

I began with ladders, and found in my stash some old Details West ladders with a rung spacing matching what is on the Athearn/Roundhouse car body. These were used on the car ends, and an additional ladder was cut up to make the unusual grab iron arrangement at the left of each car side. I chose not to remove the side ladders, as they are not excessively oversize.

I then added end placard boards from the remnants of a Details West parts set, and used styrene rod for the end grab iron rungs (the end moldings included the attachment points). The A end is shown below. Note that all sill steps are now removed, as the prototype ones were a different shape than those on the project kit body.

The details added to the A end, shown above, were also added to the B end. In addition, the brake gear details were added to the B end of the car. From the prototype photos in kit directions (see second paragraph of the present post for a link), the hand brakes were Ajax, and I used the Kadee wheel, along with an Ajax gear box from my parts stash. 

I continued by adding A-Line sill steps, along with Tichy corner grabs on the lateral running boards. Those grabs were modeled using the same method I showed in a recent post on another project (see my description at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-hendrickson-usra-box-car-conclusion.html ). 

Below is a photo of the model at this point, resting on “paint shop” temporary trucks and ready for primer. I should mention that I don’t always prime models. With some paint, such as TruColor which will not adhere to resin, priming first is essential, but in other cases, it may not be necessary. For the present case, with a variety of materials in the added details, and the prominent GN lettering of the original kit, which I planned to cover rather than strip, primer seemed like a good idea.

For primer, I used the excellent Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer (White)” because I know it gives excellent coverage in a thin coat, and the spray can works very nicely, nothing like cheap “rattle cans” might do. I have now used it for a number of projects, and have always been quite happy with the results. Below is the model with its primer coat (and couplers taped). You will note that the huge GN emblem is still faintly visible, but the darker boxcar red final color will cover this easily.

This concludes all the construction and detailing work on this model. The final steps are paint and lettering and I will take those up in a future post.

Tony Thompson