A red boxcar and yellow trailer in HOe

This little boxcar is based on one used by the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway in 1870. The TG&BR operated as a narrow gauge line (3’-6”) from its creation in 1868 up until it completed conversion to standard gauge in 1881. So, I fully admit this car is an anachronism on the Loonar Module, but the whole layout is an anachronistic fiction, so it fits right in :-)

The prototype was a 4-wheeler based on British railway practice and measured 15’ long. So, given this information, the boxcar sketch at Narrow Gauge Through the Bush, and the requirement to run on the Loonar Module’s N-gauge track, I started to think about what I’d have to do to make some sort of HOe model. 

Basic Peco NR-122 chassis (I've added a wire loop 'coupler' to left end)

The first decision was to buy a suitable British N-gauge wagon whose undercarriage was similar to the TG&BR boxcar’s as I didn’t think I could scratchbuild a chassis with the precision needed to run properly on the track. After some internet searching I was glad to see that one can buy kits of just chassis, which saved me from scrapping a perfectly good wagon body. The kit I settled on was Peco’s NR-122, 15ft WB Wagon Chassis. The 15ft WB part means the wheelbase is 15ft. I wasn’t sure if 15 N-scale feet was going to be too long to negotiate the layout’s tight curves, but overall this seemed to be the right size chassis for this project.

I needn’t have worried. It goes around the track just fine, and there was a lucky coincidence with this chassis: its deck measures 15 HO feet long by 4.5 HO feet wide, so lengthwise it matches the prototype. However, the deck’s width needed to be extended a bit.

Chassis with deck extended

Doing a few calculations I estimated the width of the prototype boxcar to be around 9.5’, which would be too wide for my track. Also, recall the prototype boxcar ran on track whose gauge was 3’-6”, and mine is around 2’-6”, so a boxcar of scale width would overhang the wheels too much. On the other hand, the Peco chassis’ 4.5’ width is a bit too narrow to be practical for this kind of car. As well, such a narrow width would make the car look too tall and skinny. In the end, to make the width more practical and better looking I glued on styrene pieces to the deck to increase the width to 6’. So, my HOe boxcar was sized to be built on a deck 15’ long and 6’ wide.

Once I had sorted out the chassis and deck, I sketched out a drawing. Nothing fancy, just something to remind me of the major dimensions and where the main detail items were to be positioned.

As with the canoe car, I'm not going to do a step-by-step through the construction of this little model, but instead show some built up photos and talk a bit.

The four sides are made from 0.020" styrene scraps. I scored vertical boards in with a scribing tool. These pieces were then reinforced on the back sides with pieces of 0.040" styrene glued on.

The overhead door track and end bumper on the side walls are cut from a piece of 0.040" styrene square stock, and the door lock is cut from pieces of 0.010" styrene.

The door handle is a leftover item from a Revell Lunar Module kit, and the grab iron ladders on the ends are bent from pieces of 26 gauge floral wire. 

Once the walls were glued up into a box and then glued to the chassis' deck, some further reinforcements were added.

First, some rectangular strip stock was used to reinforce two corners (the upper right and lower left ones in the photo), then two spacers were wedged between the side walls, and a beam was inserted between the two end walls to prevent those upper triangles from bowing in.

I used Weld Bond to secure the grab irons to the walls. 

After letting the glue joints harden for a day I moved on to building the roof and roof walk.

Both are built up from 0.020" styrene scraps. In retrospect I think the roof battens are a little too thick, and probably should have been made from either 0.010" or 0.005" styrene - oh well, live and learn.

The brake wheel was pried off a junker caboose and super glued to the end of a piece of 24 gauge floral wire.

You can get a bit better view of the end wall with the brake wheel in this photo.

As I've said many times, the digital camera is a harsh mistress and it's certainly true with this photo. The brake wheel looks all titled sitting on top of the wire, and the wire has got kinks in it. And, good grief, those grab irons. I'll only note that when everything is painted up, and the car's on the layout, it looks rather ok. However, if you're going to build one of these, consider using some straight piano wire for the brake, as well as commercial castings for the grab irons and brake wheel - remember I've classified this post as 'Casualized  HO' for a reason :-)

The car was now ready for painting.

The basic car colour is Revell's Aqua Color Reddish Brown Matt, 36137, painted on with a brush in as thin layers as I could manage, which turned out to be just a little too thick as much of the siding scribing has been lost. 

The roof was painted with Tamiya flat aluminum acrylic paint; grab irons, door handles, and brake wheel are Tamiya Flat Yellow; and the chassis components, brake wire, and door locks are Tamiya Dark Iron.

Once basic painting was done it was on to a little bit of weathering. Some loose washes of Tamyia Dark Iron and Flat Black were applied all over. When dry, a loose wash of a mix of Revell's Reddish Brown and Dark Green - to make a rusty colour - was slopped on the chassis and roof. 

What about that big 4* I hear you asking? It's hand painted on with some Tamyia flat white. 

Back in the '70s my sister is being a good sport lending scale

During the preparation stage on the boxcar project I found an N-scale freight car truck with an attached coupler in my scrap box. I thought I'd use it to build a little flat deck trailer for the boxcar. The one I had in mind to memorialize is that one over there I saw in the '70s - likely at the old Marmora train station. Mine isn't close to that in other than basic principles, so I can see me building a proper one later on.

This little thing was made from scraps of styrene L-angle, U-channel, and some 0.020" sheet. And of course I painted it yellow.

A little trailer like this one has a lot of uses.

Well, that's that.

Oh, wait a minute, one last thing. This project took only about 8 days of on-and-off work, an hour or two at a time, sometimes just ten minutes or so. I received the chassis in the mail on a Friday afternoon, by the following Wednesday all construction was finished, and by the Saturday both were painted and ready to run. That's some kind of record for me. I hope it continues.

*This boxcar was used to transport the equipment of the Lands & Forests Railway Test Facility’s hockey team, the Loons, to their first ever inter-departmental league game where they faced the Skies & Waters Snapping Turtles, with whom they would become arch rivals in the years to come. Unbeknownst to the Loons until game time, the first puck drop was by none other than Bobby Orr, who was invited to kick off the first game of the season. The Loons won and in honour of the win they stencilled a giant 4, Bobby Orr’s jersey number, on the side of the car that carried their equipment to that legendary game.