Elvas Tower: NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD 1890's 20-Ton 33-Ft.BOX CARS - Elvas Tower

MSTS/ORTS NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD 1890's 20-Ton 33-Ft.BOX CARS
EQUIPPED WITH LINK AND PIN COUPLERS
**VERY HIGH DETAIL WITH LARGE POLYGON COUNTS**
MODEL MESH BY TIM MUIR
TEXTURES BY TIM MUIR, WAYNE CAMPBELL (WHEEL FACES) AND CGTEXTURES.COM (weathering source materials).

Prototype's General Background.

These models represent one of the many 33-foot box cars the Northern Pacific RR acquired from the Peninsular Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, during the 1880's. Not much else has been uncovered by me pertaining to them, other than it was the standard boxcar used by NP until the next batch of 20 36'foot cars that were built by NP starting in 1893, followed by 3000 copies built by commercial builders in 1896. Previous box cars were built in 1870 and 1872 and were 28-foot and 30-foot long cars.

I have included a "bonus": a Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Ry. box car which was next to an NP 33-foot box car in an 1889 photo supplied by Steve Thompson. I found it to be interesting so built a model of it, with a couple of detail variations to match what I could see in the small photo.

Model Background and Data:

The models were built using Train Sim Modeler Pro by Abacus. They are highly detailed with just over 13,930 polygons (the three NP cars) and 14,000 (the Seattle Lake Shore car) in the main shape file. A less detailed set of the same cars will be available also. As compensation for these high levels of polygons, I have given the models 2 levels of detail, or LODs.

These cars are equipped with link and pin type couplers, to go with the two NP 1890's 2-8-0's and 33-foot caboose I recently published. The only other link and pin cars that I know of available for MSTS/ORTS are those available as payware at V-Scale Creations, which come in the Ozark Norhtern route and the Colorado Midland locomotive and rolling stock pack. I intend to build more link and pin freight cars soon to fill the freeware void.

There are empty (_mt) and loaded (_ld) wag files for each car.

I wish to thank the following folks for thier assistance along the way:

Steve Thompson, as mentioned, for digging deep in his collections and supplying rare photos. Also for making the vertical-arched Northern Pacific lettering used during the 1880's.

Jim Bebenroth, for testing the cars, and for suggestions.

John H. White, Jr, author of "The American Railroad Freight Car- From the Wood Car Era to the Coming of Steel". This very large volume is chocked full of history, drawings, photos and data covering this subject. It was within the section on general merchandise type cars I found the high quality plans for this box car.

Tim Muir
Read Railroad Earth, Jack Keroac
October the 18th, 2012