Manufacturer
Athearn Trains
2883 E. Spring St., Suite 100
Long Beach, CA 90806
athearn.com
Road names: St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt) and Southern Pacific (four road numbers each with COTS, four without). Also available as an undecorated kit.
Era: 1970 to 1990s
Comments: Athearn has previously offered a highly detailed HO scale model of a Pacific Car & Foundry 50-foot insulated boxcar as part of its top-end Genesis line. We reviewed that model in our May 2011 issue. Now, Athearn offers the car with dual Landis doors, a configuration owned by the Southern Pacific and its subsidiary, the St. Louis Southwestern (or Cotton Belt).
Pacific Car & Foundry built the cars, with their distinctive pairing of eight-foot and six-foot Landis doors, for SP in 1970 and early 1971. The car is an Association of American Railroads type RBL, an insulated boxcar with load restraints. This type of car was used for carrying canned food and other temperature-sensitive goods.
Our sample is decorated for the SP, with large, yellow “Hydra-Cushion For Fragile Freight” billboard lettering. The paint job is smooth and even, with crisp definition in the printed lettering. Even the smallest lettering is legible. When checking this, though, I noticed that the builder’s mark has missing letters, reading “Pacific Car and FoundrCompany.” I thought this might have been a mechanical misprint, but it was the same on both sides. Our Cotton Belt sample had the same mistake. However, this type is so small as to render the error unnoticeable.
I compared the paint scheme and detail placement to a photo of a class B-70-57 boxcar in Southern Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by James Kinkaid (Morning Sun), and everything matches. The blackened metal wheelsets, mounted on plastic axles, are in gauge. The McHenry magnetic knuckle couplers are mounted at the correct height. Unlike prototype Hydra-Cushion-equipped cars, the draft gear is firmly fixed to the car and can’t move.
Since the prototypes traveled far and wide in interchange service, these boxcars would make a great addition to any HO scale line from the 1970s on.
