Among the eleven freight cars I acquired from the 10/30 MTH warehouse auction on Cabin Fever. was this lot of RailKing freight cars. I was interested in the boxcars, and the caboose was part of the lot. This how it looked as photographed for the auction:
The caboose arrived pretty much as pictured, wrapped in bubble wrap. A couple of days later, I extracted it form the shipping carton and laid out all the parts in the bag:
The roofwalk is a bit crunched at the top end but hasn't actually broken. Maybe sticking it in some hot water will un-stiffen it enough to be somewhat straightened. Everything else looks to be present. As written on the bag, there are no lights, but there are what appears to be the fixtures for mounting them, the trucks have pickup rollers, and the axle wipers are included, as well as what appears to be a wiring harness.
I haven't decided whether to have it painted or just assemble it undecorated as a novelty piece. but I figured I'd lay it all out to show just how many parts go into one of these things. I don't currently have sufficient horizontal space to do the assembly, but eventually I'll be able to make room to do so--I just don't know when that's going to be. (a story lots of us can relate to).
As for the boxcars, at least one of them will eventually become a fictional "BeamNG" car seen in the vehicle-simulation game of the same name. Originally I was going to do this to a Weaver 50' boxcar I got at York, but I decided the ribbing was too pronounced to get decent results with decals.
---PCJ
