My Favorite Trainfest Announcement

There were lots of good announcements from Trainfest in Milwaukee last weekend, reported at Model Railroader. The one that really turned my crank, though, was Accurail's announcement of 36-foot boxcar prototypes from the first few decades of the 20th century.

I'm not committed to any particular era or prototype, but I've always enjoyed the shorter and earlier equipment, especially in connection with small steam and short lines. Accurail has always done a good job on earlier prototypes. Here are some that are on my layout:

I notice that Accurail older prototypes like these turn up frequently on Model Railroader HO project layouts, like the current Winston Salem Southbound Tar Branch. With a little weathering and paint on trucks and underframes, they work very well. A couple of photos above show how well they also work with recent Bachmann locos of the same era.

In the past, 36-foot steel underframe boxcars were available in urethane. I assembled a number of these, although more recently I'm less willing to undertake all that effort. Here are two that were available in the 1990s from the Renssellaer club's store:

I always eagerly await each new Accurail release.