Two More House Cars

My objective for the weekend was to finish building two more house cars , also known as box cars. I had worked on the trucks for these cars earlier in the week. Thus, I just needed to build the chassis and bodies this weekend. But, I hadn't built a car in a few months, so the first thing I did was review the drawings for the laser cut parts. I made a few adjustments to the drawings after checking several prototype photos for detailing ideas. With the revised drawings, I fired up the laser and cut the parts for the first one. I assembled it and had some additional ideas for the second car. By Sunday evening I had both cars assembled. The photos show the cars in the process of getting decals.

The car in the rear has a roof walk. In looking at various prototype photos of the USMRR, I noticed slightly more than half the cars have roof walks. So far, none of my cars have roof walks, so I decided to start adding them. Both of these cars will have working brakes. The second car will have movable doors. I even made the door latch operable (the latch is part of the etched detail parts fret), but that was just for fun. I don't expect to use them during operations. This car will have open doors, with the interior showing some details.

After I took these photos I realized I forgot to add the stirrups and grab iron by the ladders. I'll add them ASAP.

One thing is for sure, you have to like NBWs if you are going to do O scale early steam era modelling. Each truck has 20 NBWs, while the car body has about 50.