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For a while I’d been thinking what I really need is a good boxcar for my layout.
When I saw Christopher Masi’s LDD “Old
(Millyard) Boxcar” I knew I had found what I was looking for. The only problem
was Chris’ boxcar was in 8-wide and all of my equipment is 6-wide. So I set out
to convert Chris’ model to 6-wide and in the process I added some features of my
own. Here’s the result:
gallery: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=194414
Chris deserves credit for most of the great aspects of this design, including
the subtly sloped roof
and the sliding doors
that really open and close. My additions include the
“checkerboard” livery
and the air brake
details in the undercarriage. The livery is meant to suggest rolling stock used
by the Ralston Purina Company (reporting mark RPCX). While I’m sure George
Westinghouse may argue my air brake detailing isn’t quite accurate when viewed
from the bottom, the idea was to put some greebling there to evoke it when
viewed from the side.
The conversion to 6-wide wasn’t completely trivial and maintaining the sloped
roof and working doors took some thought. I also came up with this
arrangement of tiles
to create the proper resistance to keep the doors from sliding open by
themselves under acceleration.
Of course the underlying goal was to create a boxcar I could buy from LEGO
Factory, and that’s exactly what I did:
It’s in the gallery as boxcar_redchx28i under
username pdurbano. Cost is about $55 US, for 452 pieces. The design was done
with MLCAD and then imported to LDD. The LXF file contains organized
instructions that are the best I could do without the ability to make
sub-assemblies. LDD doesn’t let you adjust hinge control sticks (a.k.a. Mini
Antenna in LDD) so make sure you tuck in the ends of those in the undercarriage
as shown in my
picture. The direct link for purchasing it is here (may expire eventually):
http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=LFH002&mid=1af58fbc-ced0-4d6b-ad11-a40313768508
At first I was confused why the Factory site listed it as having 464 pieces
until I opened the box and found it has the new
assemble-yourself
wheelsets. Each wheelset gets counted four times.
While so much of the credit goes to Chris, I’d still love to know what you think
of the bits I did. Also, if anyone likes it enough to buy one I’d love to hear
about it or see pictures if used in a show.
Thanks!
Paul D’Urbano
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Factory Set: Checkerboard Boxcar
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| (...) Hi Paul, I like it a lot. I like the details quite a lot. I build the few train cars that I do in 6 wide, but like to think of them as "beefy six wide" as I would this. I'd love to see this in dark red or reddish brown with the same livery. I (...) (18 years ago, 17-Jul-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: Factory Set: Checkerboard Boxcar
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| (...) [...] (...) Paul, Thanks for the kind words. I should point out that the sliding door is a derivative of something the James Mathis Suggested to me a long time ago :) Also, in the arena of there are no "new" ideas... after designing my roof I (...) (18 years ago, 18-Jul-06, to lugnet.trains)
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