Elvas Tower: NP 20-Ton Box Cars with Knuckle Couplers - Elvas Tower

MSTS/ORTS NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD 1900's 20-Ton 33-Ft.BOX CARS
EQUIPPED WITH KNUCKLE (MCB) COUPLERS
**MEDIUM-HIGH DETAIL** "Medium Poly"
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 aquired from the Penninsular 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. Knowing NP's penchant for keeping equipment for as long as it would last, I suspect these cars had long lives, possibly into the 1920's.

I have included a "bonus" early Spokane, Portland & Seattle Ry. box car.

Model Background and Data:

The models were built using Train Sim Modeler Pro by Abacus. They are detailed with just over 9,200 polygons (the three NP cars) and 9,277 (the SP&S car) in the main shape file. These are the less detailed set of the same cars as the higher detailed set of 20-ton NP box cars. I have given these models 4 levels of detail, or LODs.

These cars are equipped with KNUCKLE couplers, to go with the NP 1902 2-8-0 #60 or other early 20th century power.

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

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

Steve Thompson, as mentioned, for digging deep in his collections and supplying rare photos.

Jim Bebenroth, for testing the cars, and 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.