The last intermodal car in this short series is a red TOFC car. There were four of them in the OO SIG Inventory, the other three being similar but of a slightly different design.

These are in fact scratchbuilt. The first photo shows one of these cars with a full sized OO trailer (kitbashed from a toy I believe) and the second photo shows one under construction, primed for painting. The construction photo was sent me by Bill Johann back in 1991, along with a photo of a completed car of the same type, car number 367, with a trailer of the same type. I think he sent it to me at the time because I was a younger guy and maybe could be enticed to get interested in more modern equipment. At the time though I was very focused on the 40’s-50’s period and I did not follow up on this. Now, I actually have three distinct groups of equipment; transition era, 1920s era, and “modern” 1980s era.

These cars are short units that run great on the 26” radius curves of my layout. I am going to have to put together a good, 1980s era locomotive sometime soon to pull these.

One additional red car needs more work and is still not usable but between well cars and spine cars and other TOFC cars I have a total of ten units that will operate together and they really are a pleasure to run, they look so much like the trains we see still see today out in the west.

The next couple weeks I will be pretty tied up and will have a limited ability to post (or ready the Inventory) but be watching for more on that as soon as practical.

UPDATE: I learned from Pierre Bourassa that he made the trailer in the photo. It was made in a different manner than the others with the cars which are marked as being by Bill Johann. Also, Johann described these cars as “NS type TOFC/COFC flats as converted from boxcars.”