The Rapido Single Sheathed USRA Box Car

 Revised

Following up on their beautiful double sheathed, 40 ton USRA offering, Rapido has just announced their version of the single sheathed 50 ton USRA box car.  By my modelling era of 1944, nearly 2000 of the original 25000 cars had been rebuilt or wrecked, leaving 22201 cars in service in their original configuration.  Of these, the Pennsylvania RR rostered nearly half with 9765 of their X26 class, Milwaukee retained 3857 of their original 4000 cars, and New York Central had 1967.  A complete list of cars extracted from the October 1944 ORER follows.

 

Mark	Start	End	Oct 44  # of cars
AA	90000	90199	198
AB&C	27000	27199	190
B&O	186999	187499	463
C&O	600	1505	51
CC&O	8000	8299	289
CNJ	20000	20499	482
CNW	143700	145698	980
D&H	17001	17500	463
MEC	36001	36300	297
MILW	700000	703999	3857
N&W	120000	120799	778
NYC	160000	160999	5
NYC	277000	277999	979
NYC	282000	282999	983
NYC	TOTAL		1967
PRR	37100	39865	2731
PRR	44001	46725	2693
PRR	83397	83572	173
PRR	86798	869000	100
PRR	90504	90513	10
PRR	93901	93925	25
PRR	97805	97948	141
PRR	511396	511430	35
PRR	512065	512069	5
PRR	518217	518949	723
PRR	530076	530080	5
PRR	531194	531198	5
PRR	540001	540798	785
PRR	549202	549282	81
PRR	564270	566090	1795
PRR	596001	596450	442
PRR	598438	598453	16
PRR	TOTAL		9765
RDG	5001	5999	678
RF&P	981	1140	144
RF&P	2451	2800	339
SP	26360	27359	970
WM	26300	26599	290
	Grand Total		22201

 

Now to the applicability of the Rapido models to my era. 

 

The D&H, PRR, CNW, MILW, MEC, SP, CNJ, C&O. NYC, RDG, & RF&P cars are usable as depicted for a 1944 modeler.  The AA artwork is in the 90000 series, but the listed car numbers are in the 346500 series. I can’t quite make out the reweigh date in the online rendering.  The B&O model are lettered in the 90000 series and would need to be renumbered for 1944.  Are those actually the AA numbers?  N&W renumbered their cars into the 40000 series after 1945 so I would have to back date them into the 120000 series. 

 

I can justify several of the Pennsy cars along with a couple from SP, MILW and NYC.  Singletons from the usable list can replace Accurail and Tichy cars currently in my fleet.  Time to call my dealer!

 

John Barry

Lovettsville, VA

15 June 2021

Update: Thanks to Jim Gates eagle eyes, I removed the PRR 83589 X25 series I misread as X26 and updated the totals in the text and table.

JCB