North Louisiana & Gulf Boxcar 5226

And so there I was, using the latest leaser locomotive - BSTX 5859 - to switch a few cars around on the JSSX.  As I was getting ready to snap a picture, that little bit of green behind the engine stood out and caught my eye.

BSTX switching at the far end of the JSSX yard

Moving the camera a few inches over to the right shows a bit more of the boxcar.  And a bit more of an industrial looking background too.

That's boxcar NLG 5226 being shoved around the curve to be spotted

To me, NLG 5226 is not just any old Roundhouse/MDC car. You know, the ones they made with the molded-on grab irons. This is the very first freight car that I ever painted myself, and that would have been something like 30 years ago. I've never weathered it, and probably won't.

Back then, Model Railroader magazine often had a feature called Paint Shop.  It was a really well liked feature of the magazine at the time.  And in one of those, they had a guide to painting and decaling a North Louisiana & Gulf boxcar. I thought it was a pretty cool looking boxcar (still do) and I thought I just might be able to pull such a thing off.

I bought the FMC model boxcar in the GT paint scheme for $7 (price tag still on the box) at Broughdale Hobby in London, Ontario and stripped all the paint I could off of it.  I found the correct Herald King decal set at a train show, maybe from Terry Link in Komoka.

I kept what remained of the decal sheet, and still have it.  As an aside, I've long wondered why decal manufacturers use such light coloured backing papers when they print their white decals.  Common sense tells me that a darker coloured paper would make the white decals so much easier for us all to see.

I posed NLG 5226 for this photo.  I don't know how I came up with that exact car number.

I think I didn't know enough to put at least the car number on the ends back then.  So there's another project to catch up on.  I think I used a BN Green mixed with a bit of white for the paint, and silver for the roof.

So there it is.  My 50 foot NLG boxcar after some 30 years, still looking like it was just painted.

Have a great week everyone.  You going to do some modeling ?