I’ve been working slowly on a number of things over the summer. Besides limited time, a big bottleneck has been limited time to use my garage shop specifically. But I did finally finish (or nearly finish) this nice boxcar.

Backing up a step, finding decals to use is a challenge. I did have a good “score” at a couple local shows recently and purchased a number of sets of vintage (but not that old really) Champion sets, especially a group of their UP boxcar sets.

The photo below shows (sort of) my decal “station” (inside a low box, with a water bowl on the left) and how I set things up. I like to have a prototype photo right there to follow if possible.

Comparing the prototype photo and the car, even though the set is HO, it fits the car pretty well. I used Microscale products to help the decals settle into place fully, poking the “bubbles” (in the rivet areas) a number of times.

Also you can see that the car is not done yet, I plan to add proper brake details and rework the trucks and couplers sometime soon. Will likely apply weathering, too.

The other thing that inspired me to use the UP decals is I have a vintage car that has decals on it that are more undersized. See especially the right hand side. I think this particular HO Champ set worked pretty well, and happily I have sets to do several more of these. Including probably the vintage car seen below, it deserves fresh paint and a new set of decals.