On Apr 14, 2008, at 8:16 AM, John Hile wrote:

--- In STMFC@..., "sfeforever" <dwedel1@> wrote:

On Richard Hendrickson's accurate Santa Fe kits he doesn't list

any

Accurail kits. None of the kits are even close ? How 'bout

Branchline's

Santa Fe kits ? Was the list compiled before Accurail's and
Branchline's offerings ?

Dwight,

There is a more recent list on the S.F. Rwy Hist. & Modeling Society
site. See the online resources section at atsfrr.net then look under
Richard Hendrickson. IIRC, two Branchline cars are listed there
(Bx-44 and Fe-27), but no Accurail. The only close ATSF Accurail cars
I am aware of would be the DS wood box as a Bx-2 and perhaps the DS
wood reefer as a USRA car. The reefer may be close to the Rr-4 for
which it is decorated, but I have not done any comparisons to the
prototype. At the least, I suspect hatch orientation and hatch
platforms would need to be changed. To be honest, I have not focused
on either of the Accurail cars, as the prototypes had been rebuilt
into steel-bodied cars by my era of interest...1952-53.

I compiled that list YEARS ago, so it's seriously out of date. I'm
of two minds about publishing lists of that sort at all; they may be
useful at the time, but then they don't go away, and fairly soon they
become not only obsolete but misleading. As John says, the
Branchline Bx-44 and Fe-27 models are accurate, apart from some
details. As for the Accurail models, the only one that's
prototypically correct for the Santa Fe is the 40' USRA wood sheathed
box car (assuming you can live with the molded-on grab irons and
such), and the Santa Fe Bx-2s were all rebuilt into steel cars by
1942. The reefer model is nowhere close to the Santa Fe's Rr-4 class
or any other of its modified USRA wood reefers, which had, in
addition to different ice hatch covers and platforms, different
roofs, different underframes, and five foot wide doors.

Richard Hendrickson