New Haven 50ft Double Door Boxcar

My finished Robin's Rails boxcar is already in service in the Bellows Falls yard. It got a good dose of weathering since it will be in later years service. This small NH fleet  of 15 cars was numbered 40500-40514. It was part of a larger order for the C&O.

The weather being what it was in July (extra hot and very humid) I did not spend as much time at the lake as I would have liked. The trade off was a number of days down in my cool basement finishing off kits I have had on the go for sometime now and begin a few new ones. This car a Robin's Rails Inc. offering I touched on in a early post this summer. Well it went together a lot quicker than I anticipated although it did require some compromises. The instructions included suck, but I have built a lot of this style of car in the past and was not a problem.

I modeled the car with one set of doors open. I added a bunch of unused details to make it more interesting when sitting on a siding. If I use it on a train I just reverse it, using the other side with the closed doors as one never gets a peek at the other car sides while covering the WRD route. Although this car was built in Nov. 1956 I weathered it up as it looked in the photo from 1972 and will be in my contemporary fleet. The photo captions tell the rest of the story...George Dutka

The finished assembled car is seen next to the photo I used to weather the car. Lots of missing paint on the roof and streaks down the side. The rust spots on the car sides I just dabbed some Floquil rust onto areas seen in the photo with a fine brush.

The open doors add more interest to this car with barrels, boxes and crates up front. Along the rear wall are some old oil signs and so on. Newspapers are also found laying around by the doorway. Tichy wire grabs are added on the sides and ends. I also bent wire cut levers for each end. Tack boards are added as seen in the photos. An ACI label is added along with a Herald King lube label as seen in the prototype photos.

The roof got a good weathering as seen in the books picture. I began by brushing full strength Floquil old silver on the roof. I then added a light wash of Floquil rust over the silver followed by a similar wash of grime. Bragdon powders followed.

Guess the NH will be getting a surprise.as one can see the CV and B&M are using this car to load all their junk scattered around the yard. By the way this double door car had a 7 ft door on the left and a 8 ft. door on the right.

This is how it looked before I started.