One firm to produce a line of OO gauge freight car kits the early 1940s was Hawk. These I think were their best two OO models.

First we have this boxcar, a recent eBay find. I have profiled this model before and it seems to be one that modelers liked to modify.

The new car is no exception. The builder has replaced the door and also look at the ends. The stock version would have a plain end. This model now has a brass overlay with rivet details appropriate to imitate an early type of steel end.

From the bottom it shows the classic Hawk frame. It was never set up with trucks so far as I can tell. I plan to mount a good pair after I tweak details a bit and paint and letter the car, hopefully sometime soon but there are many projects underway.

The same could be said for this gondola, another eBay find early this year. As noted in the earlier article, this is a sulfur gondola of ATSF prototype. This is also an example of a car that was never set up for trucks but was close to finished (maybe 70%) and will make a nice car.

Why these are their best two cars is because they are models of wood prototype cars nicely designed with good quality wood parts. I will over time rebuild a couple of the steel cars too but I don’t have much hope that they will turn out as nicely as these as they lack rivet details with plain sides.