About that John Allen box car

What box car, I hear you ask? Why, the one I mused about in my recent post about John Allen (if you like, you can view that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/10/reminders-of-john-allens-modeling.html ). It was a box car lettered for the Superior Detritus Company. I decided I would give it a shot.

Not feeling an obligation to follow John Allen’s model exactly, I decided to forego using a Central Valley 34-foot box car kit as a foundation. Instead, I updated the idea (as John himself might do today), and used an Accurail box car. The Accurail 1700-series of 36-foot box cars has double sheathing, wood ends, and a fishbelly underframe, features that seem consonant with John’s era and John’s model. I chose Accurail #1797, a data-only paint scheme.

I began as I do with Accurail house cars, cutting the steel weight in half with a hacksaw, smoothing the cut ends, and gluing the two halves together and to the car interior floor with canopy glue. This avoids any possible interference with long truck or coupler box screws.

Proceeding with the simple assembly sequence, I completed the underframe with Kadee #158 couplers in the kit coupler boxes and InterMountain wheelsets in the supplied truck frames. 

Finally, I always use a brass brake wheel instead of the vulnerable Accurail plastic ones, usually Cal Scale parts, soldered to a brass wire shaft. It and the nice sill steps were painted with Star Brand Paint STR-30, “SP/UP Freight Car Red,” a nice boxcar red hue. 

With that work completed, I could apply the very nice 3DP Train decals, set GBC-B011-HO (see their site at: https://3dptrain.com/products/gbc-b011 ). These have a nice, thin film and are a pleasure to apply. After completing application, I added a coat of protective clear flat. 

Next came weathering. As I almost always do, I used water washes made with acrylic tube paints for this (for description of the technique, and illustrations, see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of this post). Once weathered, I added decal paint patches for Sunshine reweigh and repack decals, along with route cards and a few chalk marks.

The next question is, what would waybills for this car look like? We are given a clue by the “return to” legend in the car lettering, Behrend, Missouri. I accordingly devised the bill shown below, tongue of course firmly in cheek. 

This has been a fun model to complete, and will be fun to operate in a future session. Thanks again to 3DP Train for the nice decals, and of course to John Allen for the original.

Tony Thompson