Box cars with raised roofs

[kirkifer]

Has anyone kitbashed boxcars with raised roofs?

Conrail seemingly did this a lot.

www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=19769

I have also seen that CP, UP, SF used to do this a lot.

The thing that is stopping me from doing these has to do with larger doors. Just curious if anyone has pics of their projects like this?

[drolsen]

I'm getting ready to start a raised roof kitbash project to model this car:

HS 75404:
drolsen.rrpicturearchives.net/rsPicture.aspx?id=495983

I just received the undec Athearn SIECO box car for the project. I have several raised roof box cars planned, but what appealed to me about this one is that the door was not modified, so I can just raise the roof by adding styrene strip and leave the door as-is. Other than that, I plan to add a separate lower door track, and a few underbody details (including the cushion draft gear). Should be a relatively straight-forward project to get me started.

Dave

[carlmarsico]

GTW also had a few cars with raised roofs in autoparts service, 50' and 60' PS-1's come to mind.

Freight car lessor GERSCO was pretty active in raising Plate B cars to Plate C clearance, the above-referenced HS car being a good example.

CJM

[kirkifer]

That's nice Dave...

So what is the story behind these mods, other than the obvious?

Some of the cars, like the one Dave is planning, only raised the roof by less than a foot?

Some of the PS 60 footers got huge lifts... I guess it all depends on the needs of the shipper.

Were the cars re-purposed and pulled out of storage with roof modifications? What was the original purpose of the car versus the remodel?

[drolsen]

I'm not sure exactly what kind of service the HS car was/is used for, but it was likely rebuilt simply just to bring it up to the current "standard" size for 50' box cars. When the car was originally built, Plate B cars were still pretty common, but later in its like, taller Plate C cars became the norm, so the roof was raised on this car to give it the same cubic capacity (5277 cuft) as those taller cars.

By the way, that HS car originally wore MILW reporting marks, and then was rebuilt and wore MDR reporting marks like this one, which is how I'm going to do mine (for my 1998 modeling period):

MDR 9445:
www.krunk.org/~joeshaw/pics/shortlines/mdr/mdr9445.jpg

The larger 60' box cars with raised roofs that you've seen were probably Plate B or C when they were originally built - i.e. they were similar in height to the 50' HS car. Most 60' cars are used to transport bulky items, such as appliances or automobile parts. The "standard" 60' cars used today are Plate F or taller / larger cars, so the older cars have had their roofs raised to match the current standard. Here's a prototype CSX example that I'm working on (but still trying to figure out exactly how much to raise the roof):

CSXT 166645:
www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=974648

I'm converting an Intermountain 60' PS-1 box car into a double door car and raising the roof to match that car.

So basically both the 50' and 60' cars have had their roofs raised to the current standard - it's just that there are different standards for the two different length cars.

Hope that helps,

Dave