Bowser 50' two and four door box cars

[riogrande]

Bowser has released a batch of 2 and 4 door box cars.

I have attempted to look up the SP and PC versions and was not able to find any matches via road numbers. The road numbers on both SP and the PC car were missing in Fallenflags, which leads me to wonder if they are fictitious, as can often be the case. Anyone been able to verify if any of the available road names are good matches to any road names?

[roadkill]

Foobies. These cars are flat-roofed versions of the Pennsy X31 and X32 class boxcars and they have no known prototype.

[riogrande]

I figured they were foobies for the prototypes I checked, but you are saying those Bowser 2 and 4 door 50' box cars have no match to any prototype? Say it ain't so!

[talltim]

these are the ones in question
www.bowser-trains.com/new/50ftboxcar.html

[cf7]

I think the cars looks great and I like the fact that the ACI plate is already on them. Don't much care if they are foobies. As long as they look the part, I'm good with that.

[stefano1]

Re: SP box cars
double doors should be centered,

but road numbers are ok → series SP 220000 – 220499
50 of these cars were converted to Copper Rod Service and renumbered SP 606575 – 606624 in 1971,
according to SP Color Guide Vol. 2 which shows #220350 (Bowser) , #220393 and #606599 (Bowser)
www.railgoat.railfan.net/spcars/byclass/box/b070-14.htm

[kentuckysouthernrwy]

Feb 13, 2018 13:12:12 GMT -8 cf7 said:

I think the cars looks great and I like the fact that the ACI plate is already on them. Don't much care if they are foobies. As long as they look the part, I'm good with that.

Heretic...

[stevewagner]

Bowser doesn't pretend that these cars are anything but "generic". The ones decorated as Reading cars repainted by the Delaware & Hudson after the D&H got them when Conrail was formed in 1976 are not anything like exact replicas of the more modern cars the D&H actually obtained, but the car numbers match those of cars with that history. The roofs and ends look to me similar to those of AAR 1937 design cars. The solid green cars Bowser offers represent at least some cars on which the D&H applied paint to part of the sides that didn't quite match the original Reading paint on other parts. But when I first saw a full size dark green D&H 50' boxcar with yellow graphics, at some distance from a passenger train I was on in Worcester, Mass. c. 1976 or 1977, I thought it had been fully repainted, and I thought it was the most attractive D&H freight car livery I'd ever seen.

Sales of cars like these help support the firm's investment in producing more authentic models like the forthcoming Also RS-3's. I have no quarrel with that.

[jbilbrey]

As others have mentioned, the Bower boxcars are at best stand-in's for correct models of the prototype cars.  As far as the PE/PC boxcars go, they are models of boxcars from PE series 4600-4699, built by Pullman-Standard in 1964.  As a result, the ends, side-sills, and door-widths do not match the prototype car:

PE 4682

At some point, nearly every model railroader has to decide between "good enough" and "100% accurate".  For example, the EL gon that I posted in Sunday's Photo Fun is "good enough", but not entirely accurate.  For starters, while the prototype photo's ends are in the shadows, my friend and I drew the conclusion that there is about a 99% chance that the model's ends are not correct.  Another example I have is a IM BNSF Centerflow Hopper.  The capacity is correct as well as the type of hatches for the car number.  But, likely IM simply drew the numbers used for the run at random.  The car that I have is painted green (as some of the class are).  However, BNSF wasn't consistent when repainting that particular series of hoppers.  You guess it; the prototype with the same roadnumber was repainted in mineral red.
 
I can live with errors like the above.  But, what gets me is when the manufacturer has the correct model of car for a particular road but still paints it for an incorrect series and/or a different car.  I got "burned" by Athearn doing just that at a recent show.  I found a SOO Line/CP Trinity 5161 hopper, which I assumed was correct as I had seen the prototypes in Nashville.  Of course when I got home, I realized that the model was decorated for a smaller NSC hopper which is a different car all together than the Trinity hopper (and the Athearn model).