Improving a Life-Like boxcar

[sailormatlac]

Well done! That is strange. Yours, the correct paint scheme, is totally different from the one LifeLike applied. How come they made a pure fictional paint scheme? I think LifeLike has in general a good reputation.

@Reinhard: Years ago, before P2K existed, most Life-Like stuff wasn't nothing more than toys for kids. Many cars were crude because the tooling was from the 60s and 70s. Paint scheme, especially for canadian roads was no more than pure fantasy most of the time. This boxcar was from this line of RTR toys. Some of them, as you can see, are totally salvageable and "correct" for nowadays standard, but many of them would require major rebuilding à la Doctorwayne to be decent. As a young kid in the late 80s, I prefered my Bachmann stuff over my Life-Like set. I remember to have truly hated Model Power for their cars which had no stability. IHC cars were also notable junk to me. Imagine, you are a kid, you finally get a few bucks from picking up strawberries, spend them on a 5-6$ car (which was a large sum for me back then) and get a unusuable car on the layout... Only the Michigan Alcali Chlorine tank car was decent!

@Andy: I'm perfectly aware of Microscale's offering. However, I'm well-known to be a lazy modeller that use expedients to make sure a project is completed. I know myself, if I had waited 2 weeks to get the decals, I'll probably had completed the project in 5 months. If I can make a decent Elesco feedwater from a Papermate pen, I'll gladly do it! (done it). But I must admit next time I order decals, I'll get them!

Matt