I really wanted a PRR X29b because these were the only 40 foot boxcars to sport the colorful Merchandise Service “MS-1” Paint scheme. This is the one with a large horizontal aluminum band running the length of the car and bordered top and bottom with two smaller white bands. A large Keystone inside a Touline Red circle graced the right side, and the words “Merchandise Service” are painted across the aluminum band. The link below is of the car I modeled
https://jbritton.pennsyrr.com/...ise_car_-34_view.jpg
As a bit of background; The Pennsylvania Railroad converted approximately 4500 X29 Box Cars to Class X29b between 1948 and 1952. The original fleet of X29s had gotten a bit long in the tooth and ripe for modernization. The body was removed and a new wider and taller car body was installed on the X-29 chassis. The car bodies had a diagonal roof, ten panel sides, and 7’ doors. The wider box car body was mounted to the narrower X-29 chassis with T-section brackets along the lower sill. The brackets/narrower lower chassis are distinctive features of the car. The original chassis retained its 2D-F8 trucks, and kept the same spacing which was wider than that of a standard box car. This is wider stance gives the cars another distinctive feature. Both of these need to be included if you are going to model an X29b, in my opinion.
Other reference are the Keystone Modelers #15, October, 2004, #37, 2006, #50, Sep 2007, and
To make mine, I simply copied what the Penny did, albeit at 1/48 the size: I cut off the lower sills of an Atlas X29, and glued the resulting four sections to a slightly shortened (in height) Atlas Trainman 40’ Box car.
For the X29, I had to thin the thickness of the sills by about a half and mill back the sides of the chassis to get the sills to be recessed inward enough. I also had to drill new mounting holes in the chassis to mount the Trainman Boxcar. I adapted Kadee Couplers for better realism, durability, and operability, and changed to brass 2D-F8 trucks from American Scale models for the same reasons.
I chose the Trainman Boxcar because of its diagonal roof, correct ends, ten panel sides, and very close proximity to the prototype dimensions. The exception is the Trainman doors which are 8 feet wide. So I narrowed them to 7 feet by cutting out two 1/8” wide sections and butt gluing the remains back together. I also had to narrow the door opening with styrene strips and shorten the door guides. This resulted in some AWOL rivets. These were restored using Archer Rivet decals.
I wanted to keep the sliding doors because I lined the inside walls of the car with scribed and stained wood, and I wanted to show that off:
The Trainman Boxcar is a good start, but it is not as detailed as I wanted for this project. So I shaved off all the cast in grab irons, removed the oversized plastic brake hardware, ladders and roof walk, and installed my own. I used brass grabs from Precision Scale and O Scale America, brass ladders from Precision Scale, and the brake hardware and roof walk from a junker Atlas 1937 AAR Box car. The T-section brackets were made by soldering brass angles together.
Poling pockets were modified from Precision Scale castings, and the cut levers were scratch built from steel wire. They are held to the bottom of the coupler box with micro magnets. This facilitates taking the car apart if I have to.
I drew drill templates for the grab iron and ladder mounting posts, printed them out on cardstock and held them in place with removable double sided tape. This allowed me to accurately drill the mounting holes. Everything is held in place with Canopy Glue, which is strong, dries clear and a bit flexible. Excess glue can be wiped off with water moistened Q-Tips before it dries with leaving virtually no residue. If you need to reposition something, applying water with a Q Tip softens the glue enough for easy removal.
I got into a highly entertaining diminishing supply of PRR paint. I managed to get the car painted without running out, but I WAS worried! I used a 2:1 mixture of Polyscale Special Oxide Red and Zinc Chromate Primer to get reasonably close to PRR Freight Car Red of the 1948 era
I painted the car with the grab irons mounted, but painted the roofwalk, ladders, and brake hardware separately and unattached. This prevented paint build up and shadowing around and under these parts. It also allowed me to get that long decal stripe under the ladders
I used Microscale 48-554 decals. After decaling I sprayed everything (including the unattached parts) with Dull Cote. Speaking of decaling, I met my Modeling Waterloo trying to decorate those doors. The tale is way too painful to recount here. Suffice it to say I never got the decals to snuggle down into the door corrugations, not to mention maintain some semblance of their full width. This despite going through two sets. And I have a lot of experience with decals of all stripes and widths!
So I ended up painting the door stripes. (Don’t look TOO close!).
Lastly I attached the roofwalk, ladders, and brake hardware with Canopy Glue
The side view really shows off the wide stance of the trucks:
There was nothing special about these cars were used. They were hauled around in freights like any other PRR Boxcar. As is this one on my layout:
As with all such projects it took a whole lot longer than I originally thought it would. As a result, I expect some manufacturer will now offer a PRR X29b.
