# Boxcar kits



## dms1 (May 27, 2010)

I am looking to get a couple of short 30' boxcar and flatcar kits and was wondering who else manufactures these kits other than Ozark Miniatures and Hartford products. Is the quality of these kits about equal? Are there any reviews on these kits? Anything I need to know?

Thanks 

Dave S


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

You didn't mention scale, but two sources of kits are:

PHIL'S NARROW GAUGE. A lot of detail 

NORTHEAST NARROW GAUGE, minimal detail, you can add as much or as little as you care to. At least that is what they were like 20 or so years age when I made a couple of them.

Chuck


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By dms1 on 29 Mar 2013 08:49 AM 
I am looking to get a couple of short 30' boxcar and flatcar kits and was wondering who else manufactures these kits other than Ozark Miniatures and Hartford products. Is the quality of these kits about equal? Are there any reviews on these kits? Anything I need to know?

Thanks 

Dave S 
I agree with Chuck on Phil's narrow Gauge. I have just completed one of Phil's 30' box cars. D&RGW type. Nice kit to assemble and lots of detail. Get the ball- bearing retrofit on the trucks while you're at it. Well worth the extra money.
Link to PNG: 
http://www.philsnarrowgauge.com/default.html


BTW, ALL of Phil's kits are 1/20.3.


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is a link to NENG:

Northeast Narrow Gauge

Call and talk to them about scale of a specific kit. The site mentions scale for some kits and not for others.

Chuck


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## dms1 (May 27, 2010)

Yea,I forgot to add I'm looking for 1:20.3 short boxcars - 20-30 Ft., I will check out those sites. 
Also Phils Narrow Gauge website says they are out of stock of 30' cars .

Has anyone put together a Hartford or Ozark kit? 

Any others available?

Dave S


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By dms1 on 29 Mar 2013 10:52 AM 
Yea,I forgot to add I'm looking for 1:20.3 short boxcars - 20-30 Ft., I will check out those sites. 
Also Phils Narrow Gauge website says they are out of stock of 30' cars .

Has anyone put together a Hartford or Ozark kit? 

Any others available?

Dave S 

I'm just now starting a Hartford 30' flat car. This one is the FULL kit, not a SHORT kit. It contains all wood parts, metal detail parts and the trucks. I am impressed with the building jig that comes with this kit. Helps with the build of the car frame.


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Dave, 30' narrow gauge box cars and flat cars were standard lengths for most of the last century. Shorter lengths were more common in the 19th century. In general, as the engines got bigger and more powerful, the cars grew as well. On the D&RGW, pictures show K series engines pulling mostly 30' freight cars. When the C-16 was new the cars were shorter. I built a Sheridan Products kit of 27' D&RGW box car. Unfortunately, they are no longer in business. Perhaps, someone has one that they might sell. Chuck.


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## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

Has anyone put together a Hartford or Ozark kit? 
You betcha, (as they say in Alaska.) 

Hartford are the most detailed "craftsman" type kits. Currently, they are only available as 'short' kits, without the necessary wood, but the kit includes full instructions about what sizes of wooden parts are needed. If you have a table saw you can cut your own. (And then you know which piece of wood is which part # - a minor problem with the original kits!) The complete kits are sometimes offered for sale - try asking on the One-20point3 group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/One-20point3/.]


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## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

and flatcar kits 
There are a few threads around about making a flatcar from scratch. They are not at all difficult if you can cut wood to length (consistently) with a saw. 

Take a look at http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/mikereilley/Building log articles/Flatcar_Scratchbuild_Chapter1.pdf and http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/aft/114872/Default.aspx . [If those links don't work, google "site:mylargescale.com flatcar build ".]


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Dave:


Sorry, I thought you were talking about the length of the car, not the components in a kit. New terminology, at least to me.

Chuck

PS here is a picture of the Sheridan Kit.


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## dms1 (May 27, 2010)

* Actually I am looking for 30 foot boxcars kits*. I appreciate the posts to the scratch builds but I have never built a model train car of any sort and wanted to purchase a kit or two to see what is involved with building one. I am also hoping the kit is complete (except for paint \ glue etc) so i don't have to purchase any additional parts. If nobody comes up with any other alternatives or reviews of the kits mentioned in the first post, I am thinking I will buy one kit from Ozark and one from Hartford and compare the two. Unfortunately the finished products from these companies look the same, but neither of them show the parts included in the kits for a better comparison.


Thanks

Dave S


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## Dr Rivet (Jan 5, 2008)

Dave 

Hartford NO LONGER produces complete kits. a Hartford "Short kit" ONLY has the castings, trucks, couplers, and a set of plans. If you find an old "complete kit" from Hartford, be prepared to spend a lot of time, and exercise a lot of patience. It will produce a very detailed model, but I hesitate to recommend one a a "very first kit". I highly recommend a kit from Phil's Narrow Gauge as a "starter kit" It is 1:20 scale. This is a relatively easy build for a beginner. I have no current experience with rolling stock kits from other manufacturers. 

EDIT.. per your last post... Hartford kits have more fine detail than the others. I have never seen a NENG kit that had anywhere near the detail of a Hartford or PNG kit... but that may have changed. The prices pretty much tell the story.


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

Chuck, 

I purchased a Hartford flatcar kit from the estate of the late Jim Francis. That's where I learned the "short" and "complete" terminology myself.









Jim,

I agree about the difficulty of a Hartford kit in comparison to Phil's kits. I had built one of Phil's 30' box cars first. That one gave me the skills to attempt the Hartford 30' flat. When Jim bought this kit originally many years ago, I believe it was $125! They are NICE though!


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks, Gary. Jim Stapleton and I had a conversation earlier this afternoon about short kits. 

Dave S:

As a first time builder I would recommend, if you want to get two kits and compare the ease of construction and quality and number of parts, go with PNG and Ozark. Especially, since the short kit doesn't have any of the wood (sides, doors, ends, roof and floor). Hartford's kits, while the final product is excellent, are from what I have heard from experienced kit builders not very easy. I have built some of his logging cars, but no regular freight cars. I have a 30' box car kit that I'll try sometime. I do not think that it is suitable for a person who has never built a kit. I have built two of Phil's Reefer kits (40' and 30'). All the detail parts that I even thought that I needed were there, and some pieces that I didn't know I needed were there too. I have no experience with Ozark, so you will have to talk to others about how they go together. I have found that Phil's instructions are excellent and the kits were relatively easy builds.

Go to Phil's web site and look at the pictures of cars that his customers have built and sent in.

Chuck

PS As I recall all the holes for the hardware are predrilled and all the wood is precut. No cutting or drilling is needed.


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

The of the nice things about Phil's box car kits is that the frame is pre-assembled and drilled. The remainder of the kit is pre-drilled also. Nice start out kit. I don't know if the flat is done the same way.


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## dms1 (May 27, 2010)

I ended up buying 1 boxcar kit and one flat car kit from Ozark Miniatures and will post pictures of the kits here when I get them. Will also order a Boxcar kit from Phils Narrow Gauge when he gets them in stock.

Thanks.


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## dms1 (May 27, 2010)

Just a FYI, Phil's Narrow Gauge is waiting for parts, so I will ask to be put on a waiting list there, and when I went to order a work caboose from Northeast Model Products, when you proceed to check out they have a message that they are no longer taking orders.


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## Rail Planet (Jan 22, 2012)

Posted By Pete Thornton on 29 Mar 2013 12:20 PM 

Take a look at http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/mikereilley/Building log articles/Flatcar_Scratchbuild_Chapter1.pdf 


Hey Pete, do you (or anyone else here) have the rest of the files that go along with that flatcar build?


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Rail Planet on 04 Apr 2013 07:46 PM 
Posted By Pete Thornton on 29 Mar 2013 12:20 PM

Take a look at http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/mikereilley/Building log articles/Flatcar_Scratchbuild_Chapter1.pdf 
Hey Pete, do you (or anyone else here) have the rest of the files that go along with that flatcar build?
Maybe these will be of help.









Wayne Spence - MLS 1:20.3 D&RGW 29'-6" Flatcar / Chapters 1-4 (PDF 2.56MB)[/b]

Wayne Spence - MLS 1:20.3 D&RGW 29'-6" Flatcar / Drawings (PDF 412KB)[/b]


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## dms1 (May 27, 2010)

Thanks for those documents, I copied them to my PC. It sucks that all of these businesses are fading away. I hope Northeast Model Products is just a temporary closure.


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## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By dms1 on 05 Apr 2013 01:58 AM 
Thanks for those documents, I copied them to my PC. It sucks that all of these businesses are fading away. I hope Northeast Model Products is just a temporary closure. 

Dave,It runs in cycles. Someone has a good idea, makes a few kits, everyone who wants one buys one, and then demand slows down. Or someone else comes out with an easier solution so demand dries up. The vendor then takes a break or moves on. It just happened with Bronson-Tate's coaches - as Accucraft now sell J&S coaches there is less demand for the complicated Carter Bros kit.

(You learn to buy something that looks good even if you know you won't need it for a while! It may not be around when you do. 

Many of the boxcar kits were offered due to the lack of off-the-shelf 1:20.3 equipment. Now we have Bachmann and Accucraft selling well-detailed models, so the folk who might have purchased and built a kit, but prefer not to, can get what they want more easily.

I'm also noting rumblings that fewer people are making things from kits or from scratch. Maybe it's too much television, not enough workshop opportunities, smaller houses or whatever, but there have been discussions about the phenom.

On a positive note - all the Northeast Model kits were the result of garden Railways Magazine running full-size plans for various items as a supplement in the magazine. Northeast supplied the plans and then started offering wooden 'kits' to match. (As mentioned, they weren't very detailed, but were a good basic model.) The plans, as far as I know, are still available from GR via their website. All you have to do is cut some wood and you'll havea NE Models kit.


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## Bruce Chandler (Jan 2, 2008)

The kits from PNG are a great way to gain confidence for scratch building. I started with the kits and now build most of my models from scratch.

I've written an article on the construction of one of his reefer kits.


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## dms1 (May 27, 2010)

I found that article doing Google searches and made a copy of it for the future. Thanks for sharing that build online.


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## Rail Planet (Jan 22, 2012)

Thank you Steve!


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## jbwilcox (Jan 2, 2008)

I would like to see some more of the Bachmann 1:22 cars available in kit form. 

They were cheap and easy to assemble.

I cannot find them listed at any of the major vendors.

If anyone know where some of them can be found (especially the Boxcar) I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

John


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## astrayelmgod (Jan 2, 2008)

I went through a phase of building about two dozen Hartford kits, in the "complete" days, and I would offer one bit of advice for any kit or scratch car. Avoid using CA for joining wood to metal parts. The joints are brittle, and detail parts snap off if you even look at them cross-eyed. If I were to do it again, I would use something like Barge cement, which has some flexibility even when dry.


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## Jerry Barnes (Jan 2, 2008)

John, 
I've seen them on ebay now and then.


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