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 Posted - April 29 2014 : 5:31:26 PM
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I was at the local club quarterly swap meet recently and picked up a number of unbuilt and built Athearn cars for repurposing. I had come across the story of the Alcoa-built Great Northern all-aluminum box car, numbered 2500, which was put into experimental express service at the end of WW2. It was a bit of a departure for GN, but I then read of several other roads using Reynolds Aluminum-built box cars in test phases as well.
The rationale for these was that the newer metallurgical techniques developed during the war, to rapidly build combat aircraft of aluminum was "logically" transferrable technology that could be used by the railroads to lighten the weight of their box cars- and hence, improve the operability and efficiency of their locomotives, particularly with express freight runs.
The problems which arose came from the fact that steel and aluminum, where the chassis of these box cars remained steel and then where aluminum was placed in direct contact, an electrochemical process began that resulted in severe corrosion over a relatively short time. A form of industrial caulk was used in an attempt to isolate the metals, but it had the reverse effect of accelerating the corrosion. I guess they did not think of using a sprayed-on plastic to electrically isolate the metals, but that might have been a few steps yet in the future perhaps.
Combining that problem with the still-costly price for aluminum versus high strength steel panels was the end of the experiment a few years later, in the early 1950s. Although some aluminum cars remained in service for a while longer, they became orphans.
Fortunately for the Minnesota, Sioux Lake & Western, the parent railroad Great Northern was generous to lend their orphan to another family for continued service.
I started with this:
and ended up with this:
I used Krylon Matte Aluminum paint, then decaled it as per 1940s GN standards (and logo), then Dullcoted it with Testors. Intermountain 33" metal wheels and el cheapo (for now) whisker couplers completed the job, with just a bit of a weathered interior floor. The interior walls were also painted alminum and dullcoted.
The wheels are shiny now, but I plan to start painting & weathering wheels soon with a special jig that beats the commercial ones I have seen online. More on that later...
Siouxlake Ron
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Country:  USA ~
Posts: 510 ~
Member Since: September 21 2011 ~
Last Visit: December 21 2014
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Posted - April 29 2014 : 6:04:07 PM
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I really like that Ron, I think I'm going to do one of those myself 
I believe I read that the early streamline passenger cars had issues with dissimilar metals coming into contact causing premature corrosion as well.
Anyway, you ended up with a unique model.
I too embarked on a mission to paint all my rolling stock wheels/trucks to get away from the shiny wheels and jet black trucks that are never seen on real railroads. No jigs for me, I used a good ol' paint brush  Nope, not done yet!
http://tycodepot.com/
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Posted - April 29 2014 : 6:23:32 PM
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In all fairness, I should mention that there are O and HO models of this car available, but after seeing the E-bay prices for the HO model, I believe a $4.00 Athearn swap meet boxcar and some elbow grease are a better investment. As I did the "full monty" with relevant decals, it provided me with good experience in working with those extremely small box car data decals, and I can state that the VRINDA font (as contained in my MS 2003 Word software) is very very close to the "Great Northern" original Microscale decal font, using 20 point capitals and 14 point small capitals- that is why I had to make some home-grown ones, after making a critical mistake- if you place it right at first after soaking, DON"T GO BACK AND TRY TO ADJUST IT !!!!!!
Ron
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Posted - April 29 2014 : 7:02:23 PM
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| Very fine model Ron.
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