My 50-foot Erie auto car, Part 4

I began work on a kitbash of a Branchline 50-foot automobile car, adding a Viking roof and preparing to model a Chicago & North Western car. But as described in a previous post, I pivoted away from that goal and decided to model an Erie car with this roof.  (Here’s a link to that earlier post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/04/my-50-foot-automobile-car-part-3.html .)

I have not found a good end view of the 50-foot Erie Viking-roof cars, but there does exist a nice Magor Car Co. image of the B end of one of Erie’s 40-foot double-door cars, also with inverse Hutchins ends. This is probably an adequate guide to what the 50-foot cars with those ends would look like.

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Continuing with model work, I added Branchline grab irons to my model’s car sides and ends, locating the end ones as shown above, and also attached the end placard boards.

For the B end brake gear, I used some Tichy parts on hand from other projects, both for the brake step and supports, and for the gear box and handwheel of the hand brake. I added a length of brass rod to represent the brake shaft. 

Completing side details are the sill steps. The sill steps that you see in the photo above are what A-Line calls a “Style B” step, and I applied those A-Line steps. All these parts installed with canopy glue. Since I planned to attach coupler box lids with screws, I made new lids to fit. The model was then ready for paint.

I chose to use Tamiya red primer (“Oxide Red,” no. 87160, a paint I have previously found to give excellent boxcar-red color. The model below rests on my “interim truck support blocks” for painting (for a description, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/11/interim-truck-support-blocks.html ). A running board from Kadee will be installed later.

Next came the decision about black roof and ends. From what I gathered from Erie modelers I consulted, and learned from the late Richard Hendrickson, the common black end on Erie box cars was car cement to protect the steel end, not a paint scheme,  and was applied to cars as needed, not throughout the fleet (though some car were evidently delivered with black ends). I decided to do my model that way. 

Masking car sides with grab irons and ladders already applied can be challenging, but it’s much easier with a capable masking tape such as the fine Tamiya product. It can readily be stretched to place it where it’s needed. And since the paint already on the model is Tamiya, I thought it best to use a black color of the same maker. I chose Tamiya “Rubber Black,” TS-82, as a kind of off-black color. 

Next comes lettering and weathering. I also will need to choose a car number. I don’t have as much information as I’d like about the prototype, but it looks like the Erie cars numbered 68200–68275 are my prime candidates. I will discuss that point, and show all the finishing, in a following post

Tony Thompson 

My 50-foot automobile car, Part 3

Last year, I showed the starting steps in a project to add a 50-foot Viking roof to an automobile car body to model a Chicago & North Western prototype (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-simple-freight-car-kitbash.html ). 

I had on hand a pair of Cannonball Car Shops original Dreadnaught ends which I could apply to match the C&NW prototype. Shortening those ends and applying them to a Branchline 50-foot body was shown in a second post (it is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/08/freight-car-kitbash-part-2.html ). But at about that time, I discovered I already possessed such a C&NW car, that I inherited. This led to some head-scratching. What other road would have had Viking-roofed 50-foot auto cars?

The one that came to mind was the Erie, another road that evidently liked the Viking roof, so I contacted eminent Erie modeler Schuyler Larrabee to ask about prototypes. It took him a while to dig into the question, but he came back to me with the information that, yes, Erie did have some cars like that. In fact, not only is a builder photo in the 1940 Car Builders Cyclopedia (page 147) but so are the plans, confirming the Viking roof and also showing that the ends were Hutchins — and not just Hutchins, but inverse Hutchins. 

Originally these were Erie 68200–28299. Here is the Cyc photo; doors appear black on the as-delivered car.  In later repaints, the black doors were not continued, and I want to model the car in post-1947 paint, with the 6-foot Erie diamond emblem.

Turns out that Chad Boas has now produced an inverse Hutchins end, so that should enable me to convert my kitbash into an Erie automobile car. I ordered a pair, and they are shown below as I received them. They don’t have a top section, making them usable for both round-roof and peaked-roof cars, with the modeler making a top section from strip or sheet styrene to suit the model.

Previously I had applied Dreadnaught ends to my model, as described earlier, so my first step was to remove those ends. There I discovered yet another advantage of canopy glue, the adhesive used to attach the previous ends: since it doesn’t attack or bond with the styrene car body, it can be peeled off from the interface (for more about canopy glue, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-few-words-in-praise-of-canopy-glue.html ). 

Then I used Evergreen styrene strip, 6 scale inches thick, to make top sections by cutting and filing to fit. Once those strips were made, and ends cleaned up, they could be attached, once again with canopy glue. A rubber band made sure ends remained in correct alignment as the glue sets. Here the recessed panels in the inverse Hutchins end are evident.

Next I repeated the step of adding ladders to the car body, and returned to my extensive stash of freight car parts, much of it inherited from Richard Hendrickson. For this car, I chose some old Front Range ladders with the right width, which happened to be molded in orange, and attached them with canopy glue: 

Next steps include addition of grab irons, sill steps, and B-end brake gear. I might mention that the car kit that is the foundation for this project is a Branchline, now some years old, and most of the detail parts in the kit are now so brittle that they can’t even be removed from the sprues by a sprue cutter without breaking them. Other parts are being substituted. I will return to detailing steps in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Kitbashing: a cautionary tale

This story has a long background. Several years ago, I happened to have a Denver & Rio Grande Western stock car spotted at the stock pen in the East Shumala area of my layout, and a visiting operator asked about it. “Well,” I said, ‘it’s kind of a long story, not entirely a happy one.” His response was that maybe I could write it up for the blog. Now I’ve gotten around to it. (Here’s the model at work; there’s a better model photo below.) 

Back in the 1980s, I had spoken to Richard Hendrickson about a variety of kitbashing projects, and he mentioned the Denver & Rio Grande Western stock cars. I can’t recall that he offered to send a photo but I found one in the Beebe and Clegg book, Rio Grande: Mainline of the Rockies (Howell-North, Berkeley, 1962), page 287. It was taken near Frazer, Colorado by Jim Ehernberger, probably in 1955. Mid-train helper is 2-8-8-2 No. 3612.

Note here that the middle of the three visible stock cars, D&RGW 36403D (D for double deck), is distinctly taller than the cars on either side of it. Moreover, that car is somewhat like the Athearn stock car in its side bracing pattern and door. But it seemed to have a conventional paneled steel roof and Dreadnaught ends. A quick check of the ORER showed that the 36400–36499 series was 40 feet long and over 14 and a half feet tall.

But a lot of the D&RGW stock car fleet by the 1950s was still 36-foot cars, most of them about a foot shorter in height than 36403D. No doubt those are the identity of the two cars flanking D&RGW 36403D. 

Now this was back in the “bad old days” when our raw material for kitbashing was heavily based on Athearn “Blue Box” products. Knowing,as I did, that the Athearn stock car, based on a Union Pacific prototype, had a diagonal-panel roof that is a mirror image of the prototype (the diagonals run the wrong way), I started with an Athearn box car, cutting out the sides but saving the straight-panel roof and Dreadnaught ends.  

I then cut the sides from an Athearn stock car,and fitted them to the box car body, adding styrene spacers to each side of the box car floor to suit the width of the Athearn ends. The Athearn running board was discarded and replaced with  scale 1 x 6-inch styrene strips, and Westerfield corner grab irons were added.

As I often did in those days with Athearn rolling stock, I added a strip of styrene 2 x 4 to widen the brake step, and added 1 x 2 styrene supports underneath. I added wire grab irons to the sides, though I left the cast-on sill steps and ladders. Here’s a view of the B end of the model.

On the sides, I carved away the Athearn cast-on letter board at the left of the door, and made new letter boards from 0,010-inch styrene strip. I also decide to add a detail I thought was a great idea at the time, a broken board in the car side. The ends of it were painted raw wood color. I now know that a livestock owner could reject such a car for loading, because of danger of injury to the stock.

 The completed model was painted black, and lettered with parts of Champ set HN-4 and some Walthers alphabet decal parts. It was then given a coat of clear flat, and weathered with my usual acrylic washes (see Reference pages linked at the top right of this post). Here’s a side view of it.

Imagine my dismay when I learned that there were several problems with this model. First, the Rio Grande built these cars in 1954 and 1955, after my 1953 modeling era. Second, most or all of them had Improved Dreadnaught ends and diagonal-panel roofs, neither of which my model has. I didn’t create separate doors for the two decks, either.

But evidently not every 36000-series car had the later ends; below is a Jim Parker photo of 39432 (this is from Jim Eager’s excellent book, Rio Grande Color Guide (Morning Sun Books, 1996). Either this is a transition end, or is simply older (you can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish). 

So I have kept this car in service on my layout, stand-in though it may be. After all, it has a lot of the prototype right. And I confess I still like it.

Tony Thompson