Railworks America

I'm starting things off for 2025 with some repaints for USN boxcars (I actually worked on these a year ago but never finished them). Another set of 40ft cars will be coming very shortly that are for earlier era.


This is a set of repaints for the X50 Boxcar that was included in the Alco FA1 Pack by DTM.

These cars were/are used on the Naval Weapons Stations. They provide an efficient means of directly transloading munitions to and from the ships on the NWS Piers. This eliminates one step of handling as would be the case if the ammunition were to be handled again at a permanent bunker site. And any reduction in the handling of munitions decreases the chances of an accident. This method is also beneficial when the munitions only need to be stored for a short period of time.

These cars were operated on-base only and did travel out on to railroads. The government owned cars that move material over the railroads are DODX cars. Unlike the Navy cars, the DODX cars carry reporting marks that are compatible with the AARs UMLER computer tracking system. Most munitions now move in railroad owned boxcars which are much more modern then the government owned cars.

Here's a link to a video that show similar cars being moved at Naval Weapons Station Earle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alM6WPFXYDY&ab_channel=Trainz832

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vrfxmkjdgfjday4/USN+50ft+Boxcars+.zip/file

Enjoy

KB

G'day.

As promised here are the 40ft Boxcars representing [pseudo] cars used for naval weapons stations service during WWII and the 1950's. This is another set never completed a year ago but now finished.



Naval Weapons Stations and Railroads
Naval Weapons Stations date back to just after the end of World War I (and expanded during the Second World War). The United States Navy made the decision to begin establishing fleet support facilities in various parts of the country, for storing, repairing, developing and maintaining munitions used on its ships. These facilites feature huge munitions storage and maintence/service facilities located in safe up-river anchorages served by long piers. On-base railroads provide the necessary infrustructure to move the munitions and equipment around the base and, most importantly, out to the ships on the piers.

List of the main NWS Stations:

Naval Weapons Station Charleston, South Carolina
Naval Weapons Station Earle, New Jersey
Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, California
Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Virginia
Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California
Former Concord Naval Weapons Station, California

There were numerous other facilities around the country during WWII (including at Pearl Harbor, which had a narrow gauge line to serve the fleet facilities on the island), and railroads served them all. When I was serving the navy back in the early 1980's, I loved watching and exploring the navy's railroads at work on- base.

The cars in this set were created to represent boxcars used in the 1940's thru 1960's at such facilities.

Enjoy

https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/klniaswe7064ye7/USN_NWS_Boxcars.zip/file

KevinB

Just completed a set of 5-Bay Ortner Hoppers.


These are repaints of the RHam cars available here in the RWA library; which are themselves models brought into the game from MSTS (originally built by David Rowe). If only we had more people who would share how this is done...alas....sigh.

The Ortner Freight Car Company created the rapid-discharge door system in the early 1960s for Southern Railway.

Southern, which had developed the unit train concept during this period, used the cars to serve its many powerplants served across its system. Unit trains [98 car consists] shuttled back and forth between mines and power plants. Unloading a train of rapid discharge cars takes 30 minutes to an hour, as opposed to four hours or longer for other unloading systems. All in all, Southern had a fleet of 900 such cars.

Car 10,000 - On 15 October, 1980
When Southern Railway's unit coal train moved crossed the trestle at Georgia Power Company's Plant Wansley, the train looked like every other previous unit train, excpet now it carried a specail car in the consist. One of the hoppers on the 98-car was not the usual Southern red, but blue! That car was the 10,000th Ortner rapid-discharge car produced by Ortner. Freight Car Company delivered the first prototype nearly two decades ago. Southern owns more than 900 rapid discharge cars. Robert C. Ortner, president of the car company, christened the blue hopper with a bottle of champagne.

Trinity Industries later purchased Ortner Freight Car in late 1986 and continues to develop rapid-discharge cars.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/w8iagwzqkw6u69k/Ortner+5Bay+Hoppers.zip/file

Thanks to the David Rowe and RHam for the model.

KevinB

Quick Note about my screenshots.

If you right-click and use the "open in new tab" you can view my repaints in high resolution. If you just click on image in the thread, they don't get that large.

Cheers

hobo1960 wrote:Quick Note about my screenshots.

If you right-click and use the "open in new tab" you can view my repaints in high resolution. If you just click on image in the thread, they don't get that large.

Cheers

Click on the bottom right and they do

Click on image in the thread then bottom right where you hover over the enlargement symbol.

Great repaints

Rod

I can't find RHam or Ortner cars in the RWA Library. What am I missing?

Harry

Harry,

They're in the "Sugar Beet Suite" file:

https://railworksamerica.com/index.php/download-library/rolling-stock-repaints?view=document&id=1176:sugar-beet-suite&catid=19:rolling-stock-repaints

harryadkins wrote:I can't find RHam or Ortner cars in the RWA Library. What am I missing?

Harry

hobo1960 wrote:Just completed a set of 5-Bay Ortner Hoppers.

RHam 5Bay_Hoppers.jpg

These are repaints of the RHam cars available here in the RWA library; which are themselves models brought into the game from MSTS (originally built by David Rowe). If only we had more people who would share how this is done...alas....sigh.

The Ortner Freight Car Company created the rapid-discharge door system in the early 1960s for Southern Railway.

Southern, which had developed the unit train concept during this period, used the cars to serve its many powerplants served across its system. Unit trains [98 car consists] shuttled back and forth between mines and power plants. Unloading a train of rapid discharge cars takes 30 minutes to an hour, as opposed to four hours or longer for other unloading systems. All in all, Southern had a fleet of 900 such cars.

Car 10,000 - On 15 October, 1980
When Southern Railway's unit coal train moved crossed the trestle at Georgia Power Company's Plant Wansley, the train looked like every other previous unit train, excpet now it carried a specail car in the consist. One of the hoppers on the 98-car was not the usual Southern red, but blue! That car was the 10,000th Ortner rapid-discharge car produced by Ortner. Freight Car Company delivered the first prototype nearly two decades ago. Southern owns more than 900 rapid discharge cars. Robert C. Ortner, president of the car company, christened the blue hopper with a bottle of champagne.

Trinity Industries later purchased Ortner Freight Car in late 1986 and continues to develop rapid-discharge cars.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/w8iagwzqkw6u69k/Ortner+5Bay+Hoppers.zip/file

Thanks to the David Rowe and RHam for the model.

KevinB

Very nice repaints...however, after downloading I placed them in the game to test, and no couplers show? Any Ideas?

R/
Galen

Ouch!

Hmm.... this is above my pay grade. I'm only tasked with painting, management does the rest

You have the above file from library installed, yes?

Kevin

hobo1960 wrote:Ouch!

Hmm.... this is above my pay grade. I'm only tasked with painting, management does the rest

You have the above file from library installed, yes?

Kevin

Yes, I downloaded RHam's Sugar Beet file...the cars are in the folder.

I have the couplers but the wheel rims aren't the obvious metal colour, but are pure white.

That aside, the hoppers are calling for the standard Kuju coupler and don't show up in the editor, but are there when in game. The couplers are not in the actual freight or asset file as they usually are but are called for directly out of the Kuju asset file;

RailWorks\Assets\Kuju\RailSimulatorUS\RailVehicles\Couplings\Buckeye\Type-E

Rod

My apologies for not being able to help/advise. As I said, I'm only a painter and barely understand the files structure in the game.

As my brother always says, "I know just enough to be dangerous"..

Meanwhile, looking more closely at those wheels, I'm going to replace them with better textures. Will report and share when accomplished.

KevinB

G'day all...
A new drop - Timken Boxcars. This is another repaint set for the G-TraX 40ft Steel Boxcar.



These cars were another of those "delightfully colorful" items I've wanted to recreate for the game. My brother and I both love demonstrator locomotives and promotional rail equipment. These cars certainly fill the bill.

Solid facts regarding these cars are rather spotty, however I have been able to collect enough information to give a decently account of them:

The Timken Roller Bearing Company (of Canton, Ohio) was the first to introduce roller-bearing trucks for railroad cars in the 1940s.

The company's railroad efforts actually date back to 1930, when they installed roller bearings trucks on an Alco-built Northern, Timken 1111 "Four Aces". The locomotive toured the United States across numerous railroads to demonstrated the reliability and safety of the new trucks. The company later introduced the enclosed roller bearing trucks to tenders and outside bearing pilot trucks, express reefers, passenger cars, etc.

But it wasn't until the mid-1940's that the roller-bearing trucks were introduced for freight car use. To help promote these new trucks, the Timken company apparently purchased one (possibly more) freight car, replaced the older style trucks with new roller-bearing trucks, and painted it (or them) in bright company colors. How many, what exact colors, and what types of cars were treated this way remains uncertain. But, what I have verified is that at least one car was definitely produced and toured the country. In 1943 a Timken boxcar was on display at the 1948 Chicago Rail Fair.

Timken Boxcar 1948.jpg

Following the promotional campaign, ATSF was the first railroad to replace the older 'oil waste journal' trucks on the equipment with the new Timken type.

Railroad cars owned and operated by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway were some of the first to use roller bearings rather than "oil waste journal" boxes.


Whether the schemes I have created were actually found on the rails, they were certainly included in company advertisements as seen by a few examples below:



Anyway, I love colorful rail equipment and like the idea of putting on in my consist and recreating a bit of railroad history.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/q3oefcia4alnbm6/Timken+40ft+Boxcars.zip/file

Enjoy

KB

After it's "publicity tour", Timken's "Four Aces" would become Northern Pacific No.2626 in 1933, and all subsequent NP classes of Northern would be fitted with Timken roller bearings. Timken tried to buy it back in 1958 to preserve at their HQ in Canton OH, but it was scrapped in South Tacoma before a deal could be made. That was probably the last hope of a preservation, as all the NP's 4-8-4's were scrapped.

Thanks for doing these repaints

Gday, all.

I've managed to get a few new items completed this week. These are all based upon prototype equipment.


Tidewater Southern Cornucopia 50ft Boxcar
The Tidewater’s 501 series boxcars comprised 25 cars delivered in July of 1955. The most interesting aspect to the Tidewater cars was the unique logo they were delivered with. This special logo depicted a cornucopia, or “horn of plenty”, with the slogan "Serving California's Heartland." This was one of the most colorful logos ever used in railroading and was only used on the twenty five cars. The logos were large full-color decals which $80 (in 1955 dollars) per car to create and apply. (That's about $780 in today's costs).


Bureau of Standards Boxcar
A "Bureau of Standards" boxcar refers to a railroad boxcar that was specifically built for and used by the "National Bureau of Standards" (NBS), now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is a U.S. government agency responsible for establishing and maintaining measurement standards across various industries; essentially, it's a freight car used to transport materials needed for their research and calibration activities related to accurate measurements.


Pullman-Standard 85,000 50ft Boxcar
Pullman-Standard built over one million freight cars and decorated several over the years commemorating various milestones. This 50ft boxcar commemorates the 85,000th Pullman-Standard Boxcar built since 1946, which was one quarter of all the boxcars built at the time. Founded in the late 1860s, Pullman-Standard became the nation’s largest manufacturer of freight and passenger cars by the 1930s and continued to produce freight cars until 1968.


SSW Pullman-Standard 75,000 40ft Boxcar
This special Car the 75,000th PS-1 box car built by the Pullman Standard Car Company was sent to the St Louis Southwestern Railway (Cotton Belt). The car signaled 1956 as the tenth anniversary of freight car standardization". There is also a list of 75 railroads shown on the side that operated PS-1 cars.


Southern Pacific 50ft Boxcar SP-200
This boxcar was re-purposed to demonstrate the impact of coupling speeds on lading. Built for Southern Pacific, this boxcar was converted in the mid-1950s into an impact demonstration car. Serving to illustrate the importance of safe car handling, this car had a transparent sidewall on one side to show cargo movement, along with force and speed gauges displaying data from each collision.


As always, I enjoy painting 'one offs' and unusual paint schemes.

Download links now available:

https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/00dslu57as94ydf/SSW_PS_40ft_Boxcar.zip/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/fwq6pvji05a4l1u/Misc_50ft_Boxcars_%255BGreatNortherner-Allegheny%255D.zip/file

Enjoy

KevinB