Upgrading MDC/Roundhouse boxcars

[sailormatlac]

The guys at Montmorency Locomotive Works don't have a break these times, cars keep up entering and rolling out for overhaul, repairs and repainting.

As requested by jwb, here are my humble attempts to improve MDC/Roundhouse boxcars. I mostly model CN, but the fun part of North american railroads are the variety of roadnames you can encounter everywhere. Most of these cars aren't exactly prototype, but the paint schemes are attractive and quite correct so I'll keep them.

I got the shell as a bundle on Ebay few years ago, they came with Accurail underframe and trucks. They seem to be a retooling of MDC boxcars because details are sharper and doors don't open (big deal!). These shells don't have stirrups.

I'm actually in the process of weathering and repainting many cars from the club roster whom I'm the main provider. Watching Doctorwayne excellent projects, I decided to add a few details more to make them better.

My philosophy is to imrprove details that counts and makes differences from an operation point of view. It includes replacing roofwalks, adding wire grabs and improving the brake end.

Using an X-Acto chisel type blade, I scrapped off all grabirons, handbrake platform brackets and roofwalk bracket (not all). Second step, I removed the stock roofwalks. I'll replace them with Tichy see-through steel and wood plank roofwalk. Stirrups are A-Line and choosen according to prototype pictures (when available). Brakewheels are Ajax from Kadee. Other parts are A-lIne and Tichy.

2 cars had reweight/reshopped dates beyond 1959, so I replaced them with leftover decals.

I used 0.5mm sheet styrene to make platform brackets under brakewheel and roofwalks.

Here you can see the cars before any work.



A typical reworked car brake end.



After some painting. I had to mix a specific color for each car. Some were exact match, other less. It doesn't bother. From experience, I know this can be blended together with weathering. The Ann Arbor car was reshopped so the different roof color will be a good excuse to represent that. They all received a flat finish after painting to be ready to received their oil paint washes and pastel chalk.











Most of them were built in the 50's and they will receive a light weathering. Others from the 40's will be a little bit abused, not too much.

Matt