Upgrading a Red Caboose SP stock car

Over ten years ago, Red Caboose released an HO scale model of a Southern Pacific stock car, representing Class S-40-5. This was a large car class, as stock cars go, more than 800 cars. Along with Class S-40-4, the -5 class represented a standard stock car body design, differing only in whether their underframes comprised one or two center sills. Succeeding classes S-40-8 and -9 were all but identical, representing the great bulk of SP’s stock car fleet. Many survived into the 1950s. 

For these reasons, the choice by Red Caboose of Class S-40-5 to model is a good one. A post from some time back summarized how they can be upgraded (the post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/07/modeling-sp-stock-cars.html ). The primary issue to be addressed is trucks. Red Caboose supplied these models with T-section trucks, a design much used by SP between 1912 and 1925; but unfortunately, not used for stock cars except for some much later rebuilds.

Instead, SP applied Vulcan trucks to most of its stock cars, and as I know from perusal of the SP Car Ledgers, there were no examples of T-section trucks ever applied to Class S-40-5 cars. Shown below is a prototype photo of a Class S-40-5 car, taken from my book, Volume 1 in the series Southern Pacific Freight Cars, entitled “Gondolas and Stock Cars” (Signature Press, 2002). It’s an SP photo, taken at Dunsmuir in 1928, from the Shasta Division Archives. Like the rest of its class, it has Vulcan trucks, and still has the periods between initials in the reporting marks, correct until 1931.

Luckily, Kadee makes a very nice Vulcan truck. When I wrote the post linked in the paragraph above, they only offered the Vulcan design in a “sprung” truck with working springs. Subsequently, they have added an “HGC” version, with HGC standing for “high gravity compound” as the truck material. 

More importantly, the HGC trucks have a molded sideframe, thus without the far-too-open “real springs” of the sprung truck (for more on those issues, you might want to look at my MRH article, September 2016; some blog commentary is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/09/my-column-on-trucks-in-september-mrh.html ).

Below is one of the Red Caboose stock cars, with truck changed out to Kadee Vulcans. Note that the 1946 introduction of spelling out the road name instead of using the initials “SP,” has caused a rather long board to be required for that road name.

But in the early 1950s, one sees, in prototype photos, evidence that some shop repaints of SP freight cars did not bother with that full road name but just applied the initials (the pre-1946 practice). In 1953, the change back to initials became official. On stock cars, this led to the interesting result of that long board remaining, but only initials lettered on it. 

Below is a prototype example, no doubt taken to record the pair of new Trainmaster locomotives, 4810 and 4815, at Carrizozo, N.M. where they first went into service, by Lewis Harlow (Bob’s Photo collection). But this June 1955 image also records SP stock cars 70998 and 73970, both with long “road name boards” now occupied only by car initials. (You can click on the image to enlarge it.) Note also that the deep color on the stock cars suggests that they have probably been relatively recently repainted.

Lettering like this was included in the Red Caboose production of the Class S-40-5 cars, such as my model shown below, SP 73691. But in this photo, the original T-section trucks are still present, despite my having weathered the car and added chalk marks, route cards, and repack stencils. Given that the replacement of the spelled-out road name with initials was only from 1953 onward, and the discontinuance of the 1-inch stripes above and below the reporting marks was in January 1952, I tried to maintain most of the original color in the weathering, as the photo above suggests.

Of course, the truck issue is easily corrected. I simply replaced the Red Caboose trucks with those Kadee HGC Vulcan trucks, product number 1573 (with the 0.088-inch wheel treads), and added a little grime to the sideframes. I also replaced the lame couplers supplied by Red Caboose, with Kadee “scale head” whisker couplers, my de facto standard these days.

The car can now be used in layout operating sessions as a fully prototypical SP stock car, and its lettering is consistent with the model’s reweigh date of March 1953. I like variety in my stock cars, and the “remnant” long road-name board on this model provides that.

Tony Thompson