JSSX Railway: Hocking River and Northern Boxcar

Friday 18 August 2023

Hocking River and Northern Boxcar

A couple of months ago, I saw on a facebook group that another modeler - Tyler - had posted pictures of his freelance railroad, the Hocking River and Northern. What particularly struck me about it was the project that he was working on was painting and lettering a bunch of 86 foot auto parts boxcars. And, they were of the 8-door variety, which of course I particularly like.

Taking a bit of a chance, I sent Tyler a message explaining that I too like to run those jumbo sized boxcars, and asked if he would be open to selling me a set of his decals. I already had an Athearn auto parts boxcar in grey primer in my cupboard, and I could paint and letter it into an HR&N car. Tyler's paint scheme for the cars is black, silver roof, with white lettering and logo/herald.

The actual Hocking River is in Ohio, and I like to think that my layout is set in the upper midwest region, so it shouldn't really be too much of a stretch to see an HR&N boxcar in a train on my GTW.

Tyler replied to me saying that he would be happy to just send me the decals, and no need to for me to reimburse him. Sure enough, a week or so later the decal set arrived in the mail.

Here, I've got my primered boxcar masked off, and about to paint the roof. I used Dull Aluminum for that, as it's the only silver paint that I have.

Once the roof had dried overnight, and not wanting to take any chances with it, I sealed it with flat clear and let that dry for a couple of days.

During that drying time, progress continued on the project as I made a trip to the hardware store, and netted four steel nuts for use as added weight inside the boxcar.

Four steel nuts, epoxied to hold them in place above the wheel sets, add substantial weight to the 86 footer

I replaced the Athearn drawbars with new ones from Details West, part number 1040 which are better looking than the stock Athearn ones

Details West drawbars, Kadee couplers, and Rapido metal wheelsets

With the roof masked off, I began painting the body. I spray the raised and recessed areas a couple of coats first to ensure they get full coverage.

I tried to get a couple of photos of just the decal set, but they're just too shiny to photograph well, so I'll move on here to show a few pictures of the finished boxcar...