Freight Car Friday

 Well folks here it is October all ready - what happened to the summer! Seems like I blinked and it was gone. The first half of summer was carefree and my wife and I spent many lazy days enjoying the great summer weather on our back deck ( with the occasional adult beverage), but the second half was kind of full with family commitments and such. I have however managed to get some modeling time in when we had the occasional rainy day - updates on layout changes coming soon. Todays freight car Friday has the spotlight on paper cars. Back in the early 2000's, Life Like ( now taken over by Walthers) had a line called Proto 1000 - it was suppose to be an economy line of locomotives and freight cars with less detailing and such. Included in that line were NSC 50 foot boxcars that were models of the cars produced in the 1960's that were used to handle large rolls of newsprint that papermills shipped to their customers. The proto 1000 line were actually very good considering they were suppose to be an "economy model" - in fact the price stickers are still on some of the boxes of mine from my local hobby shop and it reads $8.99. When I insect the cars and see that price, all I can think is that in todays world what a bargain!! I have 9 of these cars in various paint schemes that would have been seen in the area that I model. All the modeler had to do was add on the ladders and door locking bars and the model was ready to go. One of cons of this model however is that once the door bars are added to these models, the modeler has to be very careful when sliding the models back into the box (once they are in there protective trays). The door bar roller assembly at the bottom of the door is very (and I mean VERY) fragile and if it even rubs on the flap of the box as you slide it in , it will break it off. Other than that , these models were ( and still are ) a very nice model for the price - however like most model railroad equipment I see them for sale on the internet with the asking price several times what the original owner would have paid for them. Atlas has recently announced that they will be producing this same model of boxcar -they bought the tooling from the now defunct True Line Trains, before True Line had a chance to produce this model for release. I ordered a CN version (yellow door) and a Canadian Pacific Pine Tree loco one. It will be interesting to do a side by side comparison of todays new release with the older Proto 1000 release from ~ 20 years ago. I have a feeling that the old boy on the block will still hold up well in comparison especially given the price I paid for them. Till next time....

Proto 1000 Newsprint Cars

Central Vermont #402706