34' Trans-Mississippi End Ladder Boxcar

East Side, West Side, all across the land.

Here at the Silver Crash Car Works, we hold no grudges. Even though the moneyed interests in the East nearly ruined us with their repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, we'll still make rolling stock for them. Take this 34' end-ladder boxcar, for example. The New York Central & Hudson River, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the New York, Chicago & St. Louis, the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western are just five of the major Eastern roads that ran these beauties.

End-ladder cars also had adherents in the Western and Prairie States, like the Rio Grande Western and the Chicago, Rock-Island & Pacific (both of whose 34' boxcars - just a coincidence here - very frequently ran on the Colorado Midland). Our 34' Trans-Mississippi boxcar will enable you to model any of these roads' cars, since it can be built with either left- or right-opening side doors.

As usual, this HO scale kit features a one-piece body casting as well as our ridiculously prototypical beaded siding and double-grooved roofboards. Wood never looked as good as it does in these high-quality resin castings by Barry McClelland of Railway Recollections. Trucks, couplers, lettering, and other detail parts for this car - which will vary widely according to the prototype being modeled - must be provided by the individual modeler. We have given some recommendations in the table below.

With the availability of both this car and our side-ladder Run of the Mill Sliding Door Boxcar, it's now easier than ever to put a variety of foreign 34' boxcars on your layout. So let the bridge traffic flow, gentlemen. And as the President of a prominent eastern road once said, may the world be your staging yard.

Click on these photos for full-size images:

Outside Dimensions of Car	Length 34'3", Width 8'9" over sheathing, Body Height 8'9" from bottom of sheathing to top of roofwalk
Siding / Roof	5¼" beaded siding / 6½" double-grooved roof boards
Lettering	Art Griffin has many decals suitable for this kit, including 'NYC RED LN' (cat. p.78), 'CKN 1569' (p.10), 'CRI&P 7806' (p.95), and 'ROCKBOX' (p.1), plus LS&MS Hay and Furniture car decals adaptable to 34' boxcars (p.91) and 'RGW 2217' (on p.2 and also adaptable to a 34' car), all sets for $6 each. Clover House has dry transfer set 7925-01 ($3.50) for a 41' RGW boxcar, adaptable to a 34' car.
Recommended Trucks	For CRI&P / CK&N cars built in the late 1880s: Bitter Creek Models T-18 Canda trucks ($7.95/pair including wheelsets, but temporarily unavailable as they are being remastered) For CRI&P cars built after the Silver Crash of 1893: Bitter Creek Models T-4 standard arch bar trucks ($7.95/pair incl. wheelsets). For RGW cars: Thielsen swing motion trucks, $8/pair including Kadee® wheelsets from Trout Creek Engineering (part # TC-1). For NYC&HR cars: Bitter Creek Models T-4 standard arch bar trucks ($7.95/pair incl. wheelsets) with modified bolsters.
Estimated Construction Time	Basic kit: 2 hours including end ladder or grab-irons and brake wheel Options requiring more time: underbody brake rigging on cars with air brakes, Moore Patent Door on late 1880s CR&IP cars
Kits Available From	Silver Crash Car Works ($27)