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 Posted - June 10 2014 : 11:07:42 AM
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Finally finished that "pre-Target Stores" department store box car. It was built from an undecorated Roundhouse kit I picked up this past spring at a swap meet. Generic Kadee-clone couplers (had a bunch- they are cheap- might as well use them until they break), I-M metal wheels, and a weathered interior floor were the details I used.
The light gray paint is WalMart primer and the dark gray paint is Rustoleum Dark Gray gloss. After decaling, I dullcoated the whole thing. The black colored decals I created- the white end decals came from a Microscale GN sheet (can't print white!), and the logo was generated as a custom decal mounted on .010 Plastruct styrene sheet, then I used very thin double stick tape to mount them on the car body after all other decals were in place.
The real story behind this is that my hometown (Minneapolis) department store- Dayton's- had a downtown store that covered a city block- much like other medium sized cities back in the early and mid-20th century. They began expanding into adjacent areas (the first indoor mall, called Southdale) in 1955; helped urban redevelopment in downtown St. Paul (across the Mississsippi) in the early 1960s by building a similar block-sized store; and then opened a more remote store in Rochester (Mayo Clinic area) Minnesota a few years later. Eventually. they had stores in various large 1970s-built indoor malls throughout the Twin Cities and eastern Wisconsin (within daily work commuting distance from Mpls- St. Paul). As I grew up there, there was never a need for a company-owned boxcar, but it might well have looked like this, as I took the color scheme from one of it's retail boxes:
At any rate- the Target Stores Connection: The downtown Mpls store had a huge basement floor, where old inventory/ close-outs/ overstock, etc was discounted and sold. As time went on (1950s now), they began ordering unique merchandise beyond just getting cast-offs from other store areas, just for the "basement" shoppers. This operation became so successful, that the company began plans for a stand-alone store, modeled on the Woolworth's and Kresge's (Later, K-Mart) five-and-dime stores, but updated and freshened for suburban shopping; ergo- Target Stores.
In 1962, the first of these was built in my suburb and was so successful, that -by the late 1960's- they began opening stores every few months throughout the Minnesota- Wisc- North & South Dakota- Iowa service area (using Mpls as a hub). The rest is history- as major department stores began consolidating (Federated and Allied stores buying "old name" department stores in the US, Dayton's eventually renamed themselves as Target Corporation and continued to expand nationally (parallel to the expansion of Wal-Mart, out of Arkansas). Quite a business history lesson- perhaps more information than you needed, but there it is.
(Now Ben- there never was a need for store-owned box cars, as I never saw any of them when I lived up there, as street trucking was necessary to deliver goods to so many stores on a daily basis, so there were never "Target box cars", but- like those models, this department store box car is representative of a fiction that could have been.)
Next up- a tail end caboose to match an earlier engine rebuild.
Siouxlake/ Ron
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Posted - June 10 2014 : 11:57:31 AM
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siouxlake,
That is a great looking model, Your choice of colors and the decals made a very fine model.
Regards, John
An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it. <> William Bernbach
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 Posted - June 10 2014 : 12:04:02 PM
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coool I want one!
It'd complete my Target boxcar collection 
NO kadees tho 
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 Posted - June 26 2014 : 7:21:35 PM
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Hello Ron,
Excellent job in "Protolancing"!
The paint scheme, logo, and font style complement each and make this an attractive car. Also compliments in your including an "X" on the identification signage to indicate that this freight car is owned by a private, non-railroad entity. Very nice touch inside on the wooden floorboards.
Be creative, share and enjoy the hobby :-)
Edited by - AntonioFP45 on June 26 2014 7:23:29 PM
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Posted - June 27 2014 : 10:56:10 PM
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| That is fine work. At this moment (who remembers anything other than passwords these days?), I can't recall seeing any photos of your layout siouxlake. I'll feel dumb about that in about a minute when I remember, but the bottom line is that I need a refresher on looking at your layout with all these fine models on it. You are definitely keeping the bar raised.
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