Kitbashing a NYC 40ft Stock Car

When I was modelling the Erie Harlem Station, I acquired an old Roco/AHM Great Northern stock car after reading a kitbashing article online mentioning it was based on a New York Central prototype. RMC ran an article in March 1997 about the modifications required to bring this model on par with its real life counterpart... However, I've always been too lazy to track down the article and to be honest, I didn't care about it being 100% prototypical. I just wanted it to look "right".

My weathered old Roco stock car in Great Northern scheme

That brings us to the big reason why this car doesn't look right out of the box. When Roco tooled the car, they decided to reuse their 40ft steel boxcar underframe. The only issue was that the stock being an old single sheathed boxcar from the 1920s, it was much narrower than more modern steel boxcars from the 1940s. This manufacturing compromise made the model look a little bit massive and weird.

Another mistake was the floor moving mechanism that can be see under the sills. It should only appear on one side, but Roco made both side identical, probably to reduce the tooling efforts. There were also some discrepancies on the chain locations. This mechanism was required because these cars had two levels. This is, I think, an interesting and distinctive feature of this car and to be honest, compared to other stock car toolings of the era, this Roco car was high quality, fine and prototypical. When you think about the ubiquitous Bachmann and Varney/Life-Like ones, you want to cringe. As for the Athearn one, if was only useful to a few roads.

Gluing a styrene blade guide

From what I understand, a full kitbash would require to narrow the car, remove the mechanism on one side and greatly improve it on the other side by using metal chains and rods. All fine if you model NYC, but I asked myself if it was necessary when the goal was just to have a decent car painted and lettered according to the real thing. Thus, I decided to keep both mechanism as is, reduce the width, replace the grabirons with metal ones and use a Tichy wooden roof walk. I felt the biggest offenders were indeed the clunky ladders and details.

Nice vertical and near perfect cuts!

To narrow the car body, I looked at prototype drawings online and determine I had to remove a full scale feet in the middle. To ensure a perfect cut, I glued a 3mm wide strip of styrene right in the center on the car ends and on the roof. It would serve as a convenient blade guide during the cutting process.

When done, the car was reglued together and I improved the detailing. The old lettering was sanded down with fine sand paper as I didn't thought it required a full paint striping. I also replace the brake wheel with a nice Kadee Ajax one.

Improved B end with puttied joint

Car was primed with grey Tamiya primer and a coat of faded Vallejo Terracotta paint applied. This color is my go-to all purpose Mineral Brown/Oxyde Red paint. Using the same paint but faded with more white, I dry brushed all the details to bring them to life. I also like to lightly drybrush the wooden plank along the grain to create some visual texture and mimic paint that starts to fail on wood. No need to exaggerate the effect since just a little bit is enough to add some depth to an old car.

The primed car brings everything together

Decals were from Westerfield and barely usable since they were made for another class of NYC stock car. I had to supplement the missing data with various Microscale alphabets and car data sheets, which was a little bit disappointing. Westerfield decals quality is also quite subpar for a company that used to boast about fine modelling. The printing is extremely fuzzy and the thickness is medium. It's not as bad as Tichy, but it certainly do not compare with Highball Graphics, Black Cat and even Microscale. I wish the printing quality was higher because most of the smaller text is ineligible. That said, there was light at the end of the tunnel and I managed to piece together something quite close to the prototype.

Not to bad and weathering should make it looks even better

While I could have gone crazy with this model, I think it looks great even with only a few modifications. Sure, I may be tempted some day to replace the thick rod at the bottom with phosphore-bronze wire, but that's not a priority!