Hello folks. This weeks Freight car Friday features 2 of my Proto 2000 50 foot Automobile Boxcars. These were some of the earliest freight cars that Proto 2000 did. In fact the Canadian National one shown here was the first freight car kit that I assembled after getting back into the hobby in 1996. The Grand Trunk one I assembled back in 2018. These kits are certainly more advanced than a Bluebox Athearn or an Accurail kit and even though they are now almost 25 years old, the level of detail and finish would certainly hold up well to todays high end ready to run freight cars. They do however have a couple of downsides - they can be tricky to do a good job assembling (although anyone who has assembled several model kits should have the skills required) and secondly , the detail parts such as the handrails and stirrup steps are extremely fragile and can be easily broken during assembly and handling afterwards- that being said, I would not recommend these for an operations themed layout where handling the models is common. I have a couple more that I recently picked up on eBay that will require assemble as well as one Canadian National ( wet noddle scheme) that was factory assembled. These models can still be found on Ebay in single model form or 2 and 6 pack versions. I do like that they take one back to the days where it was more common to have to put together a freight car kit to get a nice model than having it come in RTR format, which is more common today. I found that assembling the kit made for a few enjoyable evenings of modeling time. Till next time.
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| Grand Trunk # 591209 |
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| Canadian National # 559003 |
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| 50 Foot Automobile Boxcars |
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| End Loading doors on Grand Trunk Car |
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