SFLC 11157
My HO scale model of SFLC 11157 was made by patching the reporting marks on an Atlas Evans boxcar in the Evans company scheme. I chose this car because I found photographs of the real SFLC 11157. It always helps to have good reference material.
Atlas has changed the tooling on these cars at least once. The older ones, like this one, have molded on side and end ladders. Newer cars have separately applied side and end ladders. The underbody detail is also different. The older cars have the brake components in different places and there is less detail.
Otherwise the newer and older cars are pretty much the same. I like these cars but there are some things that I like to change as I did on this car. For starters, the crossover platforms over the couplers were clunky looking plastic. I got rid of those and substituted aftermarket photo-etched parts from Plano.
I added Kadee #58 couplers on both ends. I kept the stock trucks but replaced the plastic mounting pins with 2-56 screws. Sometimes on these cars I have to shave some plastic in the truck bolster area to get the coupler height to come out right.
I cut off the chunky stirrup steps and replaced them with finer ones from Detail Associates. I added uncoupling levers from Plano and train line air hoses from Detail Associates. On the “B” end I added a brake chain using a part from my scrap box.
Evans boxcars have brake rods that hang down below the floor of the car. These are visible from the side. Since this car lacked that detail, I made some from bits of styrene and brass wire. I also added some plumbing between the brake cylinder and reservoir with brass wire. My brake detail is not contest perfect, but it looks right from normal viewing angles.
To make this car into SFLC 11157 I only had to paint a blue rectangle over the existing reporting marks. I did not have to alter the number. The “SFLC” on the sides and ends is from a Microscale stencil sheet. SFLC, by the way, is for Santa Fe Leasing. Santa Fe acquired a number of Evans boxcars in various paint schemes and patched them for SFLC.
Once that was done I weathered the car using my reference photos as a guide. The techniques I used are covered in our HO Weathering & Detailing series.
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