I thought that a blog might be in order. It will mainly contain small bits and pieces that I'm working on to fill time before I finally get some sort of layout sorted. I have the stock, now I just need some track and some space to run it all on! Someday soon hopefully.

Anyway, I'll be mainly working on American stuff, with some British and maybe even some Irish stuff thrown in along the way. My first port of call is centring around two box car kits. One is a Accurail 50ft Conrail boxcar and the other is an Atlas Trainman 40ft Santa Fe boxcar to fit in with some of my older motive power. I'm not really one for sticking to one era or railroad, but the right stock will have to run together at the same time. I couldn't have steam running past some SD70s and GEVOs!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2204[/ATTACH]

Anyway, first up, the fairly simple Accurail box car, based on a car from the 1970s.

Here is the kit as it comes, American kits are nice simple affairs, easy to sling together when you're watching telly. Here's the kit, you get a choice of doors to suit your modelling period.I went with the later ones.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2205[/ATTACH]

The body of the boxcar was bowing inwards so although I knew the chassis would help reshape it, I added some plastic-card bracing too.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2198[/ATTACH]

Then the steel weight was glued to the chassis, and the doors were added to the body.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2199[/ATTACH]

Underframe detail is quite sparse, with the bare minimum added. It could be further enhanced with brass wire to replicate tubing etc at a later date, but there's also day to day handling, and as I want to build up rakes of cars for longer trains I can live without it for now. This can also be said for removing moulded detail like grab irons and installing wire replacements. Maybe I'll eventually get around to that as a fully fettled car can look fantastic when kitted out and weathered.

I did do some upgrades, replacing the godawful plastic couplers and wheels with Kadee products.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2200[/ATTACH]

And the finished product, went together nice and easy, very good quality parts. Okay, so it's very basic kit building, but for a novice who is looking to gain some confidence they are perfect to start with, and I find them therapeutic. I have a 30 litre storage box full of such kits from Athearn, Roundhouse etc. to keep me going!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2201[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2202[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2203[/ATTACH]

This was my first Accurail kit and I would defo buy some more. I'll be keen to try the Atlas one too to see how good it is. If it is anything like their RTR line of stuff it should be lovely. More on that another time.