Gold Coast 40' Steel Boxcar Canadian National

[AstroGoat760]

Here is the first car that I have purchased from Gold Coast. (There will be more as time goes on...)

My justification for starting out with a CN car is that I fell in love with CN #47, a 4-6-4T that is the only survivor of her class, and she resides in Steamtown USA, in Scranton, PA.

The car cam be bought in kit form direct from Gold Coast for $20, built and decorated from Gold Coast for $30, and from time to time they are available from Gold Coast via eBay for $32 (a little higher to cover PayPal and eBay fees.)

Aside from needing couplers, this car comes complete.

[Marquette]

I received my first of these yesterday - my initial impressions were great! It's a very nice car, well done, the details are quite nice as well, though I do wish the ladders were separate detail parts for the modeller to add on. Apart from that, great car.

Quite randomly, I chose to buy CN 473221, and I have to say I'm phenomenally pleased: the 473000-473999 series had Ajax brakewheels, 4/5 square Dreadnaught ends and Hutchins roofs - all of which the TT scale 473221 has! So, straight out of the box, this is an accurate model. I haven't taken any measurements yet, but will do so later. But all I really foresee needing to do with this car is to detail the underframe and give it a light weathering job. I'm happy, as it's a pretty rare thing even in HO to have an RTR freight car be almost bang-on accurate straight out of the pack.

A quick review of the other car numbers available on the Gold Coast models:

474637 and 475282 were part of the 474600-475299 series, which had Universal brake wheels and a flat panel roof as opposed to the Ajax wheel and Hutchins roof on the model. 475519 was in the 475300-475599 series, in which the only difference from the model was the flat-panel roof.

In short: this car could be lettered for most cars of the 473000-473999 series and be accurate (though some cars of this series had Universal brake wheels).

However, 473000-473999 was the highest number series to have Hutchins roofs; all later cars had the flat-panel roof. The model could be used as a basis for several other number series with the Hutchins roofs:

471000-471999, the difference from the model lay only in the Universal brake wheel on the prototype; this is a fairly minor difference, and given the difficulty of scratchbuilding a brakewheel short of having one etched, the model can be used as a good enough representation.

472500-472799 series had the Ajax brakewheel and Hutchins roof of the model; however, it had the exclusively Canadian NSC-1 end and National Type B trucks. Until either someone produces a National B truck or I figure out how to kitbash the ASF into a National B, I would avoid numbering any cars in this series.

472000-472499 and 472500-472799 series were identical to the previous except for the trucks. So, all that would be needed to model this car is to replace the existing Dreadnaught ends with NSC-1 ends.

The CN had many other series of 1937 AAR boxcars, but as mentioned before, these all had flat-panel roofs. I won't go through these series-by-series, though, as I think it enough to describe those with the correct roof.

So short form, one version is bang-on, and the rest are not ; but overall, a great model that presents the possibility model several variants of CN 1937 cars accurately! :)

[AstroGoat760]

I just edited the first post to replace the blurry photos with better ones.

A point of advice on the installation of couplers. I use Kadee #713 couplers. (The Kadee #714 is the same thing aside from color - black, the rust color of the #713 is more realistic, hence why I prefer it.)

There are holes in the ends of the car that are roughly the size of the screws included with the Kadee 713/714. To make the installation easier, I recommend removing the trucks, as this clears the work area up. After removing the trucks, I install the mounting screw by itself partway, to open up the mounting hole a little, and it is a lot easier than trying to get the screw to fit in the hole right while the screw is in the center of the assembled Kadee #713/714.

[AstroGoat760]

Here are more views of the car.



One more note: with the couplers installed, the car does not fit in the case well, there is no room in the packaging for the trip pins, but with a little warping of the lid, the case does go back together with the couplers installed. The glare from the case makes taking a photo of that impossible to turn out with my present camera.