Over the last week I’ve been managing to get a little bit of work done each evening on this car, and over the weekend, I got it painted, and after a few more evenings of work, the lettering on this car is basically completed. The car was lettered with a set from Highball Graphics for CP flatcars, with end reporting marks taken from another set, as they were unfortunately omitted (since regular flatcars would not have them, but the set is intended to be used for bulkheads as well, and any of those would have had them…)
The car number and logo in the prototype photo of the 305513 are actually a little smaller than on most CP Rail flatcars, so comparing the model to the photo the lettering is a little large, but short of having a custom set created for this car, this was close enough.
I only had photos of one side of the real car, but following standard CP Rail practice for flatcars the number and logo are located in different places on each side of the car.
All it needs now is a little weathering to give it a nice in-service look to finish it off.
I may still build a couple of these, since this one is lettered for a car from the 80s anyway. It’s an interesting model and would look good in pulpwood service. Do we know how many of them there were or have any idea when the modification was done?
There were two groups of these cars that I can tell, 15 cars in CP 305450-305464 and 60 in 305500-305559.
There’s a folio drawing of each series in the CP SIG archive, and a perusal of these and notes in ORERs of the period turn up some interesting information. Some individual numbers in the 450-455 series are noted as having 4″ deck risers for lumber service, and the folio drawing shows these stringers, probably 4×6 or 4×8 blocking on the car floor. Some individual numbers in the 500-559 series are noted as equipped with side stakes or log bunks.
The series all appear to have originated around 1964-65, so originally these would have been seen in CP black. I really wish I had more photos of cars from these two series, a lot of interesting things going on here.
Agreed. These cars seem to be elusive. Maybe it’s because they spent most of their time in remote logging areas. Probably some educated guesses about the black cars’ appearance would be close enough.
Great model! That decal set from Highball will have to be updated.