Tuesday, June 15, 2021

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