The gondola produced by Nason Railways is a late pre-war model not often seen. It came with printed sides and was available in two versions, for the B&O and the PRR.

Printed side models, nicely built, do catch my attention. It took me years to find my first example of this model, and PRR car number 307036, seen in the front of the photo, was a recent purchase.

While some Nason printed sides were produced with multiple car numbers, so far as I can tell this model was only sold as B&O 250538 and PRR 397036. What this builder did was use a dot of paint to change the 9 in the car number to a 0. The car in the rear in the photo has unaltered sides.

The builder did two other things to enhance the model. One was paint over most of the guide lines lightly, as the ribs are not quite wide enough to cover the printed lines. The other thing he did was construct from brass a cap piece for the sides, and solder it to the side ribs. Those builders back in the day will surprise you with little tricks like this when you look at the models closer. The cap is overly wide of course, but it does cover the visible pins and enhance the look of the sides.

I did some light restoration, adding fresh Nason end sills, S-C trucks and coupers, and touching up the paint with Model Master Oxide red flat paint, which is an excellent match for Nason paint.