Elvas Tower: NP 36-Foot Box Car Set - Elvas Tower

MSTS/ORTS NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD 1900's 36-FT BOX CARS
EQUIPPED WITH KNUCKLE (MCB) COUPLERS
**MEDIUM-HIGH DETAIL**
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 three of the 500 36-foot box cars the Northern Pacific RR acquired from the Michigan-Penninsular Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, in 1898, designed by E.M.Herr. Road numbers ranged from 35200 to 35699. 1100 similar cars to this design were also built in 1898 by the Illinois Car Co, plus another group built in NP's Brainerd, Minnesota, Shops during this period. They were designed as merchandise express cars, without end-loading lumber doors. Knowing NP's penchant for keeping equipment as long as it would last, I suspect these cars had long lives, possibly into the 1940's.


Model Background and Data:

The models were built using Train Sim Modeler Pro by Abacus. They are detailed with just over 10000 polygons. 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 any 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 and magazine articles.

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.

Thank you.