Photos of my Southern Boxcar with Hatches

[tom]

Once again it is to show some photos of one of my recent models. Again I am modeling something a little different and this time it is a Southern PS-1 boxcar that had roof hatches installed for loading of kaolin. These were a common site in the northeast traveling to paper mills and other industries.



The model started with a Kadee undecorated kit that I modified to match the Southern car. The most important one is to add the hatches (I used Tangent ones from their PS covered hopper.



Before adding the hatches the roof rib where the hatches would be installed was first sanded smooth. I installed a ring of styrene to the bottom of the hatch and then glued it to the roof. Here is a close up:



As you can see the side ladders were shortened but because access to the roof was still required the end ladders were left in the high position.....but the brakewheel was lowered.



After these details were added the car was painted with my Modelflex/Pollyscale Southern freight car red mixture plus the door was painted Reefer Yellow.



The car was then lettered with Microscale Southern decals and the ACI labels are from Highball Graphics. These cars really ended up being coated with the kaolin residue however for my era these rebuilt cars were pretty new so I went pretty easy. I added the residue by applying a very dilute mixture of white paint in Dulcote. It looks a little to dusty so I may go back and add some white water color pencils. However with weathering it is sometimes important to know when to stop.

Thanks for looking!

[dti406]

Tom, nice car, I had wanted to do a couple of those myself, thanks for the pictures and inspiration!

Rick J

[SCL618]

Just watch the panel counts to either side of the door. Southern was one of the few roads that used 16 panel versus 14 panel 50' PS-1s. This is one of the finest examples of a Southern Kaolin car I've seen. Great job.

[buffalobill]

Tom: Really nice car, executed very well. They were unusual, but fairly common in the Northeast until the mid 80's when the Kaolin tank cars became common. Like the weathering.
Bill

[TBird1958]

That's looking real good, again something slightly different, yet familiar - very cool!

[riogrande]

Very cool. When I was a geology graduate student I took a clay mineralogy class. It was fascinating to see what wide array of products clay is used in. Kaolinite was used primarily in china and paper products - especially shiny magazine paper. In the US much of it comes from the piedmont which runs from Alabama thru Georgia and up beyond Virginia at the base of the Appliachain mountain range. Makes sense that Southern would have rail cars to transport Kaolin clay.

[tom]

Apr 23, 2014 19:27:23 GMT -8 SCL618 said:

Just watch the panel counts to either side of the door. Southern was one of the few roads that used 16 panel versus 14 panel 50' PS-1s. This is one of the finest examples of a Southern Kaolin car I've seen. Great job.

Thanks everyone! I have to admit that I am not a panel counter.....

The Kadee car makes a very good starting point for this car. Years ago I modeled the same prototype starting with an ancient (pre-Intermountain) car. Same amount of work but certainly not as good as the KD car!


I grew up in a paper mill town but I do not recall seeing any of these there....just tank cars. Did see a number of the Southern cars going by on PC/CR freight trains though.

[buffalobill]

Tom, it depended on the grade of paper the individual mill produced; as Jim Fitch pointed out, Clay found its way primarily into the slick paper used for magazines and or promotional materials. Just plain office, "communications" paper may have used Precipitated Calcium Carbonate as the filler. Its all time frame oriented. The Staggers act got the conversion of Kaolin traffic to tank cars really going. Before that you would see the boxcars frequently. But that changed as the rates for the tank cars were adjusted to make it more attractive to ship the Kaolin as a liquid.
Bill

[Spikre]

Tom,
Great Looking Car !!
very under represented Type on model RRs.
the roads that had them all used their own ideas and
different cars for these LC class cars.
need to do a couple of EL cars here someday .
Spikre

[tom]

Apr 30, 2014 11:00:53 GMT -8 Spikre said:

Tom,
Great Looking Car !!
very under represented Type on model RRs.
the roads that had them all used their own ideas and
different cars for these LC class cars.
need to do a couple of EL cars here someday .
Spikre

Thanks! If I can locate some more of the Tangent covered hopper car hatches I may try to model some of the Southern or C of G 40' cars!

[marknycfan]

A+ work Tom, I like it a lot

[fiend540]

Apr 30, 2014 16:03:03 GMT -8 tom said:

Apr 30, 2014 11:00:53 GMT -8 Spikre said:

Tom,
Great Looking Car !!
very under represented Type on model RRs.
the roads that had them all used their own ideas and
different cars for these LC class cars.
need to do a couple of EL cars here someday .
Spikre

Thanks! If I can locate some more of the Tangent covered hopper car hatches I may try to model some of the Southern or C of G 40' cars!

You can get them direct from the source it seems

www.tangentscalemodels.com/product/part-sprue-ps4000-round-roof-hatches/

[tom]

May 1, 2014 19:25:13 GMT -8 fiend540 said:

Apr 30, 2014 16:03:03 GMT -8 tom said:

Thanks! If I can locate some more of the Tangent covered hopper car hatches I may try to model some of the Southern or C of G 40' cars!

You can get them direct from the source it seems

www.tangentscalemodels.com/product/part-sprue-ps4000-round-roof-hatches/

Thanks for the info! When I started my project Tangent was out of stock on these hatches and had to locate the hatches that I had odered from Tangent a while ago. I did finally locate them and used them on my Southern car.

I just ordered some more hatches from Tangent and am planning on modeling a Southern and a Central of Georgia 40' car with the hatches. Mask Island had decals for these and I will be using Kadee undec models for the cars.

Here is a photo of the C of G car:

www.rr-fallenflags.org/sout/cg6280ajs.jpg

[BEDT26]

Tom, Excellent work as always!!!

[The Bigbee Line]

Nice car. What was the Kadee Car you started with? (model number)

Thanks

[tom]

May 5, 2014 2:52:29 GMT -8 The Bigbee Line said:

Nice car. What was the Kadee Car you started with? (model number)

Thanks

Thanks! I started with the Kadee kit car #4105 or the RTR undec #6000 (I can't remember and either would work). I did replace the doors that came with the kit with another Kadee door plus I replaced the ASF trucks that came with the kit with Kadee 70-ton roller bearing trucks.

[dti406]

Tom, I happened across an article on these cars in a RMJ over the weekend while looking something else up. And the model and prototype only had one hatch at each end instead of two. Do you know if the number of hatches varied with each car and their placement on the car?

Rick J

[dstark]

There were 50' cars with two hatches;

link

and four:

link
link

Doug Stark

May 12, 2014 5:39:51 GMT -8 dti406 said:

Tom, I happened across an article on these cars in a RMJ over the weekend while looking something else up. And the model and prototype only had one hatch at each end instead of two. Do you know if the number of hatches varied with each car and their placement on the car?

Rick J