JBOX

For all of you that are more prototype oriented than I am, sorry about this. Bear with me, and try to see this from my point of view. I painted and lettered this boxcar a few years ago, and that was several years after I actually had the idea for the project.  It was one of those things that just kept getting put off, but ever since I finished it, this has been one of my favourites.

I had long wondered just what one of these might look like, although my original idea was for the project to be carried out on an 86 foot 8 door boxcar, just because I have always liked the look of the 8 door variety better.  I had trouble trying to work out the decal placement on the 8 door car though, so I ended up settling for the 4 door type.

Speaking of the decals, I ran into more trouble trying to find the boxcar data printed in black for the 86 foot car. In an online search, I was pretty happy to find decal maker Daniel Kohlberg's site, www.paducah@mindspring.com  I ordered a set of ICG decals for the 86 foot car from Daniel so that I could use just the data portion. The other decals I used are made by Microscale.

The model itself is from Athearn, picked up used at a train show. I stripped off the original paint, and then re-painted with ModelFlex RBOX yellow and black.  The roof was done with Floquil silver, then toned down with Modelflex grey. The stirrup steps had been broken off (of course, aren't they always?), so I replaced them with new ones made of brass wire.  I also added metal wheels and coupler cut-levers.

The boxcar never existed in this scheme, so I decided to use the reporting marks "JBOX". My name is Jim, which obviously starts with "J", and I very often get called Jimbo by friends and family. I supposed that if the boxcar were real, the car might also become known as a Jumbo so it all fits together, at least in my mind.

I settled on using 149500 as the car number, because that's what the load limit reads on the data set.

So, here it is. I am pretty sure this is the only the JBOX ever.