Back when Sunshine Models was in business, at the annual Naperville meeting (then conducted by Sunshine’s Martin Lofton), Martin would not only have the year’s new kits for sale, but would also offer what he called “mini-kits.” These were, in some ways, the predecessor of the Cocoa Beach “Shake ’n’ Take projects:” essentially simple kitbashes or kit modifications to achieve other prototype cars.
I’ll confess these mini-kits didn’t greatly interest me at the time, as they often were aimed at particular prototype cars or railroad fleets in which I had little interest. But my good friend Richard Hendrickson did like them, and usually bought all of them on offer in a particular year. When Richard passed away, back in 2014, most of them were auctioned off, along with his resin and styrene kits. (For those who don’t know or have forgotten who Richard was, you might enjoy reading my tribute to him, which is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-memoriam-richard-hendrickson.html .)
But I did keep a few that I thought might be interesting. These were carefully put away “in a safe place,” about which I naturally soon forgot, and it was only recently that I re-discovered the stash of mini-kits. I decided to build one of them recently, for a 1937 AAR box car built for the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio. Below is an American Car & Foundry builder photo of a car from the 5000–5683 series, built in 1942, and truncated that year at 684 cars by the War Production Board.
The photo is from Railway Prototype Cyclopedia Volume 35, by Pat Wider, one of two impressive and complete volumes about the 1937 AAR box cars. (For more about these volumes, see my post discussing them at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/02/an-appreciation-railway-prototype.html ). The photo happens to show a short-lived GM&O paint scheme with the “Rebel Route” banner, which was dropped a few years later.
The kit directions called for an undecorated Red Caboose 1937 box car kit, which I didn’t have, but I did have an Innovative Model Works (IMWX) kit for the same car, tooling for which formed the basis for the Red Caboose kit, so I used that. I assembled the kit,adding a bit more underbody brake rigging and painting the roof black before installing it. Here is the car at this point (riding on “shop trucks”):
Next came the issue of paint scheme. The Sunshine decals included with the mini-kit were for the scheme with the banner, but I decided to model the subsequent scheme, which omitted the banner. Below is a Paul Dunn photo, taken in 1952, showing the later scheme. I confess to liking these simpler schemes.
At this point I applied the decals from the mini-kit, the usual excellent RailGraphics product supplied by Sunshine. In addition, I installed Kadee #158 couplers and suitable trucks with InterMountain wheelsets. The car then looked like this:
Weathering was next. I followed my usual procedures, using washes made with acrylic tube paints, as described and illustrated in the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of this post. A protective coat of clear flat followed. Then I could add chalk marks, route cards, and patched reweigh numbers and date.
This was an interesting small project, and a chance to use the old, undecorated IMWX boxcar kit that I have had in my stash for years. This GM&O box car now ready for service on the layout.
Tony Thompson
No comments:
Post a Comment