Freight car kitbash, Part 2

In the preceding post, I showed the prototype for my modeling goal, building a 50-foot automobile car with a Viking roof (because I had a nice molding for that roof). I also showed the Branchline post-war 50-foot box car model that I chose as a basis, then stripping the factory paint and adding steel nuts for weight and installing the doors to stiffen the body. The post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-simple-freight-car-kitbash.html .  

An immediate problem with the Cannonball Car Shops(CCS) ends is that they are too tall. If you measure a typical HO box car of 10-foot inside height, the exterior height of the end, beneath the roof, is about 9 scale feet. Post-war cars, usually 10' 6" inside height, are more like 10 scale feet end height. But the CCS ends are 11.5 scale feet high. Certainly not clear what they were intended to model, but I recall fighting with the height of the Red Ball white metal versions of the same end as a teenager.

Since the CCS ends are styrene, one possible solution is to “scribe and snap” to remove one rib of the end, which removes close to one scale foot of the height, then re-assemble when attaching the end to the car. With the first cuts made, here is what you have — of course the cuts need to be cleaned up and the joints fitted to match, and the coupler box frame at bottom removed. Original end at left.

This method, however, turns out to remove more than I wanted, so I had to file down the narrow “middle” piece quite a bit for the end to fit.So I decided to try something different on the other end, simply removing the desired amount only at the top of the end. This works more simply, but helps reveal that the ribs on the end are a little bit too big. Anyhow, here is that modified end, attached to the car body. 

This size issue reminds me of a belief of Richard Hendrickson’s, that early HO scale manufacturers were not sure the HO would win out over OO scale, so made parts that were intermediate in size, between the two or sometimes just a little oversize for HO, such as the earliest Silver Streak kits, which have this oversize character. Maybe the early Red Ball parts were also intended for OO scale, or to lie in between the two scales. But I have made the ends fit.

Next I simply added the kit detail parts to the body. With a model like this, with ends not intended for use with the kit, I like to begin with the ladders. Side ladders are fitted as the kit intended, then the end ladders can be added so that the rungs align with the side ladders (a prototype requirement). In the illustration below, a replaced rung is oversize; it was replaced with smaller styrene rod.

Continuing with the body details for the project at this point just involved following kit instructions, so I won’t go into that. I will continue with other parts of the project in a future post.

Tony Thompson