Box car resin body with handrails and primer coat

Cincinnati & Lake Erie box car with clerestory roof

After posing of the handrails I applied a uniform coat of Tamiya primer on my 3D printed resin prototype.

The grooves between the planks are not filled with paint and still clearly visible, so I would make them thinner for the next print.

I am waiting for the Kadee arch bar trucks and couplers.

Stereolithographic resin print of a C&LE box car

See her coming out the shipping box, just posed on some arch bar trucks, they will be replaced by Kadee #501 trucks.

Handrails will be added, and some underframe details  too.

Soon more about this amazing technology.

IRR highspeed, some photos after painting

Two IRR Highspeed Lightweights, on the right without (portable) headlight

End view. The car on the right has square marker light boxes

In front, a coach-baggage car
Back, a coach-parlor car. 

Boxcar archeology (1) - the C&LE trailers

Cincinnati and Lake Erie boxcar #3352 - © Steven Greenup Collection

Tens of years ago, I studied history. I learned that not only glamorous objects have to tell what was and what happened, but those in the backyards, hidden and forgotten, were of great importance. Interurban freight cars were of this. Electric interurbans railways were primarily passenger carriers. The freight business came lately. And only in the Midwestern area freight grew to a major business for interurban lines, and this only for 20 years.

Remnants of a Cincinnati and Lake Erie boxcar  - © Photo Steven Greenup

Freight was carried mainly in box motor cars, hauling box trailers. If the big box motors were relatively well documented and photographed, the trailers were not. So I start what I tell "boxcar archeology". Searching remnants and documents, and bringing them together for a bigger picture. With a help and encouragement from attentive blog readers, Steven Greenup from Ohio, and Charlie Pitts from Boston.

This freight trailers were probably not welcomed by the contemporary citizen during their active lifetime, when they rumbled through the streets. But once stored for demolition, some early enthusiasts took photos or made drawings, as the famous Fritz Hardendorf.

Some car bodies were sold and reused as farm barns. Made mainly from wood, only very few survived more than 30 years. Just enough time for some enthusiasts to shot photos and to take some notes.


Cincinnati and Lake Erie boxcar #3353 - 0-scale model - © Photo and model Charlie Pitts

I will start the "boxcar archeology" with this specific cars of the Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad and their sister cars with clerestory roofs. Not to forget their original version, when owned by the legendary Ohio Electric Railways. But all this details are for the next blog message ...


Cincinnati and Lake Erie boxcar - 3D rendering

IRR Highspeed, coach-baggage version in HO

Orig. image :en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indiana65.jpg

Having added the rear baggage door, blog reader Greg Melby from Seattle reminded me not to forget the marker lights. I hesitated, but it needed to be done.

The second batch of cars build by Pullman, this with the baggage compartment, had square marker light boxes.

In fact, this was not so hard to make. I simply make the round light boxes square with model filler.

There is no danger, because if you fail, you can remove filler with a metal brush and start again.

Normally, front and rear marker light boxes were the same so you need to make the same operation on the front.

Except for one car : 72 had once a severe front collison (http://www.davesrailpix.com/irr/jpg/irr82.jpg) and was later rebuilt with round light boxes in the front. So I decided to make the car 72 car 78.

(Update : in fact the car with round marker light boxes at front and square boxes at rear end was car 78 ...)

But I made another change : Sometimes, IRR Highspeeds run without the big headlight, who was removable.

Specially in MU operations as a second or third car, or sometimes in daylight runs.

On the die cast shell, I removed the headlight with a drill, and after some care with filler and sandpaper and a coat of primer, the future Indiana Railroad 72 78 looks like this. Not so bad for a Pennsylvania Scale Model who is dating back to 1958, slightly older than me ...

The big tuscan red box trailer

Railroad roof Interurban Box Car

It takes me some time to understand how the clerestory roof of this car was really made. Not so easy as it could seem, because the upper roof is not flat, but slightly rounded.

IRR Highspeed with rear baggage door

Indiana Railroad Highspeeds

The die cast Pennsylvania Scale Model (or Bowser model) of the IRR Highspeed reproduce the coach-parlor version built by ACF with the car numbers 50-63.

The cars 64-84, built by Pullman, had a rear baggage compartment with a folding baggage door in place of the emergency door of the ACF coach-parlor cars.

I wanted to have al least one IRR-Highspeed in the coach-baggage version. For that, on one body shell, I cut out the place for the door and build this door of styrene. Next step: the paint shop.

IRR Highspeeds : Coach-Parlor and Coach-Baggage version