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USRA and other rebuilt single sheated box cars

spsalso
 

Brian,


I'm having trouble seeing where the Atlas rebuilt USRA cars are wrong for the SL-SF 127000-130499 cars.  They look to match in the photos.  What am I missing?


Ed

Edward Sutorik

Dennis Storzek <destorzek@...>
 

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 09:16 AM, Donald B. Valentine wrote:
I gather that rebuilt USRA double 
sheathed cars are those with eight panels per side while those with ten panels 
per side are rebuilt from double sheathed cars of a different design, and 
therefore different framing, than the USRA cars. Does anyone know if this is 
correct?
Don, You do realize that the USRA double sheathed car has a wood frame, so there was no framing to be saved. YSDCo. just viewed the underframe (which did have steel side sills) as a raft upon which to build a new box. And since the new boxes were built to the same width as the new 1932 ARA car, none of the framing from the various steel framed single sheathed cars was salvageable, either. The increased width is the reason the side posts look like they are mounted on brackets - they are. There is also either a step in the side at the corner post, to match the old narrower end (common on rebuilds of DS cars) or wide formed angles riveted over the corners of the even narrower ends used on SS cars. I'm no expert on YSDCo. production, but any changes in sheathing patterns and post count were made for reasons other than differences in the donor cars being rebuilt.

I agree that the Atlas model misses the mark in a number of areas; first off, I recall the underframe is too wide, and so misses the correct body too wide for the frame look. I also recall they screwed up the Murphy panel roof, bringing the raised portion of the panel all the way to the edge of the sheet.

Stick with the Sunshine kits.

Dennis Storzek
 

Brian Carlson
 

As discussed innumerable times on the list the Atlas rebuild is a mongrel that matches nothing out of the box.  It’s a tooling that should be thrown away. 

The tichy rebuild is good for P&LE. 

Brian J. Carlson 

On May 22, 2020, at 12:17 PM, Donald B. Valentine via groups.io 

Donald B. Valentine <riverman_vt@...>
 

Hi folks,
      In looking over what is available in HO scale for models of rebuilt double 
sheathed boxcars I've come up with a number of questions. I'm familiar with 
he early Sunshine kits for this type of car and built one of them for the ACL 
years ago. Recently I've been looking at the Atlas models for this type of car 
and have concluded that it's quite a bit better than I thought when first looking 
at one several years ago. I also like the fact that the car has a reasonably scale
thickness door that is well designed and opens to the full width of the prototype. 
This is a feature that I realize I am sticky about but feel it should be mandatory 
for all house car models in HO or larger scales  Some of these care have eight 
panels per side and some have 10 panels, just as Youngstown supplied them. 
But this is what raises my first question. I gather that rebuilt USRA double 
sheathed cars are those with eight panels per side while those with ten panels 
per side are rebuilt from double sheathed cars of a different design, and 
therefore different framing, than the USRA cars. Does anyone know if this is 
correct? Also, the Santa Fe had a lot of USRA double sheathed cars most of 
which seem to have been rebuilt with steel sides prior to WW II. But what about 
the Sou. Pac. and the Western Pacific that Atlas is decorating some of these 
models for? Here I suspect we are dealing with rebuilds of none USRA cars. Is 
this correct? I'm also aware that the Rock Island rebuilt a number of such cars. 
but believe most R.I. rebuilds were from USRA cars. With the C&NW I'm 
comfortable with the car but when did the C&NW begin painting the rebuilds 
with colorful green & yellow paint? Lastly we come to the Wabash and it's 
subsidiary, the Ann Arbor. My knowledge is that they both ran their single 
sheathed cars in that form until the cars were retired or am I incorrect in this? 
The Frisco had a huge number of USRA double sheathed cars and ran a major 
rebuilt program for them. However it appears to me that there were stilll over 
1,000 such cars that the Frisco did NOT rebuild that continued in use.The 
Tichy rebuild kit, for which I don't like the tooling for the ends, is of a P&LE car 
but were all NYC and/or subsidiary roads double sheathed cars rebuilt in the 
same fashion? Lots of cars and lots of questions but these are the ones I am 
most concrened with and would appreciate any comments on.

Thanks to all who can assist.
My best, Don Valentine   

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