MILW 13631
Philip Buchwald Photo
From Philip Buchwald:
This car is one of the Milwaukee Road's first rib side box cars, built in 1937. According to an article in the June 1988 Mainline Modeler, by Kirk Reddie, the 13500-13999 series of cars had full length ribs, which ran from end to end. Later cars had the ribs end a couple of feet short of either end. This series of cars was also unique in that the typical rib side box car had roof panels with two narrow corrugations between each carline. I have a photo of one car in this series which has the more common Murphy rectangular panel roof.
This model was kitbashed from a Life Like P2k 50 foot single door box car. I robbed another kit for the second doors, and then carved off all of the latches and the starter on the lower left roller. The sides were cut out and replaced with new ones made from flat styrene sheet. The ribs are made of .012 brass wire glued on top of some Evergreen .010 X .030 strip. The end door was made out of bits of .040 styrene, carved to fit into the end corrugations, with a square of .005 on top for the actual door. The car was painted with Testor's gloss enamel, mixed to match the purplish color that MILW used, and is decaled with Champ decals, then dull-coated and weathered. I've got to go back and add a reinforcement below the double doors... it completely slipped my mind until I finished the car and put it up next to the photo of the prototype.
Modeler: Philip Buchwald