Regular reader Ed Havens provided photos of a nicely built up outside braced boxcar, with the question who made it?

First, taking a look at this angle view, it is a nice car any OO gauger would be proud to own of an unusual design. This car is by Hawk, with wood sides, but not the stock version as the Hawk car is single door, not double door.

A couple details that can be seen right away are the ladders and the support brackets for the roof walk. Those are common Scale-Craft parts. Which makes some sense as the only metal part supplied in the original kit was the frame. The ends look like they could be pressed card however (Graceline? Eastern?), and the double doors look a bit home made. And the coupler pocket looks rather like a Selley part or maybe Graceline. S-C trucks and couplers maybe? Hmm.

Turning it over we can see a very distinct feature that I think confirms the Hawk ID: that is a Hawk frame for sure. So it appears as if someone took a Hawk car and tricked it out a bit for their layout.

Hawk did not make trucks. From the bottom we can also see easily that the trucks are either Famoco or Eastern products, which are identical, not Scale-Craft. The brake details look like HO detail parts from a bit later era; someone must have built this sometime after WWII. The brake line is a nice touch.

Going to the straight side view, I come back to the doors. The open doors are a nice touch. The Hawk car only had single doors—the car I described in the previous post on Hawk is closer to stock. The roof photo is fuzzy but also matches the roof of the Hawk car in the earlier post.

For a good builder, a kit is just a starting point. Time was taken to make a great model out of this unique kit. Outside braced cars are unusual in OO; this Hawk car is one to keep your eyes out for.