I was recently reading about the movement of stock by rail, and it inspired me to look a bit more at some of the vintage stock cars in my collection. Up today are these four built by James (Jimi) Trout, a Disney illustrator that was one of the “OOldtimers” that I profiled in my book. Of the four, two are Scale Craft, and two are scratchbuilt.

This one I take to be the oldest car of the group. It is scratchbuilt from wood and hand lettered for his West Coast Southern. The trucks are Nason, with a Nason brake cylinder. (NOTE: The two WCS stock cars were featured in a prior article, for more photos that article is here.)

The next two are Scale-Craft. This first one is built up for the ATSF. It has a mixture of hand lettering and decals, and a Nason brake cylinder. It could use some gentle restoration, and I like a lot how his careful build gives the car a different look than the average S-C stock car. I built three similar cars (photos of two of them are in this article) but should have managed the number boards as Trout did. They are decent stand-ins, but I’m tempted to rework them a bit now.

The second S-C car has a bit more elaborate build. Lettered for his West Coast Southern again with a mixture of decals and hand lettering, it has AB style brakes and the roofwalks have been updated from wood to a non-skid metal material. Notice also the weathering, the residue that would have been visible from cleaning the car.

The final stock car is in the worst shape but I think is the best one of the group. Seen here on the good side (the other side is missing a door, etc.) this ATSF car is built following a prototype ATSF design. It is noticeably smaller than the S-C cars (as was the first car in this article), which reminds us that the S-C car is a rather large stock car. Back to this final car though, Trout put a lot of effort into correct brake details under the car (using an Eastern brake cylinder) and built the whole thing from wood. The result was a car that must have been stunning when new. Unfortunately, it is a light car and was a bit of a fragile build. I’m considering building a new door for it and fixing all the damage on the bad side, this would be a wonderful car to operate more. Stock cars varied in size and height, and this one looks wonderful in a train.

Going back to my initial statement about my reading, I did not know clearly how the movement of stock in the area worked. I was thinking it was more about locally raised stock going to market, but actually the largest portion of the business was stock being moved up from Texas to feed in the Flint Hills, and then after fattening up the cattle they went to market in likely Kansas City. Big blocks of cars would move loaded and unloaded, certainly my Orient should be in on this business, so I need to make some more matching cars. A project I’ll get slowly working on.