Today we have a pair of modern cars in American OO, one completely scratch built by Bill Johann in 1985 and the other started by him in the 1990s and finished by me.

The Cotton Belt car is the older model. The body is wood and it is built with traditional methods, rolling on Lionel trucks which he must have felt had enough heft to look right on the car. The car in front has perhaps more of a story. The frame was in the OO Inventory, and the model had no body. It clearly had one before, maybe a couple different bodies even based on the dates on the frame (seen in the third photo), and was also on Lionel trucks. In any case it originally must have had a plastic body generally similar to the one I built up.

So the body I made has its own story. Way back in high school or close to it I bought an Athearn HO 86’ boxcar body thinking it could be converted to OO. And then it sat and sat, moved from place to place. But looking at that orphan frame it was clear that the Athearn body would make a good basis for a somewhat freelanced 60’ boxcar in OO. It exactly fits the frame, and the big plug doors I think make the model, as do the couplers on the long cushion draft gears.

How I worked the Athearn body over is fairly clear in the photos. I did split the roof and cut both ends off, making a new roof and new ends. The brass part of the ends are extra parts that I had that were produced for the Scale-Craft 50’ boxcar, and the other commercial looking parts are HO. The roof was a special challenge and actually the roof you see is the second roof that has been on the car. I opted to do a simplification that Johann did on other models I have, it is probably not totally prototypical but then again the car has a few compromises. But it is a good match for the frame and will certainly be a believable model when decorated.