Illustrating just how slowly things are working their way through my workbenches, back in October I was reworking the ends of two pre-war Hawk outside braced boxcars. This car I think is the best one of their line and can be built into a very sharp model. (An article that is an overview of their line of OO products may be found here).

Well, finally the models are done, as I’ve switched over to working on decals in the evenings. Both cars came out nicely, greatly improved from the look they had when they arrived in Arizona.

AT&SF

When working out decals I like to now find a photo of a good example online and copy the lettering, as above. For this model I used a mixture of parts of Microscale HO boxcar and stock car sets, and came pretty close. But look at the Z braces … they are backwards! But the car was built with the braces the way Hawk intended in their instructions, it is an element that different roads handled differently.

And here it is on the layout, a really nice looking vintage-style car. You can’t see it very easily, but I used early style (pre-1960) Kadee couplers (that would have the straight pin going down) as they install well on wood cars such as these and I have a supply purchased inexpensively at hobby shows. More on early Kadee couplers here.

SL-SF/Frisco Lines

The Frisco Lines car was lettered following prototype photos but also the drawing in the Walthers PLD-1 book to be sure I had the correct pre-war style. Which worked out well, as the decals are scraps from multiple Walthers HO sets plus Walthers alphabet letters and one line is from a Champ set. The Walthers scraps being from sets I used to decorate cars sometime around 1980!

Although the doors are likely incorrect, this car also looks really nice on the layout. The photo below pointing out I could improve the scenery, and that is a project I hope to do more with soon.