Minor Paintwork on an Athearn N&W Bay Window Caboose.

This little beauty rolled off the bench this week.















Nothing too fancy, Just added some windows and paintwork to a stock Athearn "Blue Box" kit.

I've expounded on my love of Athearn Blue Box kits before, but suffice to say for me personally it still remains my baseline standard for detail and realism.   Certainly not up to modern standards of prototype accuracy, but enough detail to look good on the layout and sturdy enough to pick up without fear of breaking off fiddly details. Generally the paint jobs are good enough or easily upgradable to an acceptable standard.

I acquired it looking like the one below.  Not too bad looking, and would probably be ok on the layout, but really it's a bit too plain.

Not my picture, but same model.

A visit to Railroad Picture Archive showed that it is missing some notable paint details found on similar 5575xx series cabooses from the late 70's and 80's.

As usual, I'm going for a "good enough" approximation, so it simply got...
-Windows glazing from plastic packaging
-Yellow and white details
-Black roof and lower edge.
... but I did not attempt to add undercarriage detail or modify the window positions.










Didn't get the white stripe quite as clean on this side, but it'll do. I may try to straighten out the running boards someday.






A nice little model and it fills a definite niche for me.  I've got a good sized consist of Illinois Terminal freight cars that I quite like. However, by the beginning of my layout's era (1980 on a 80'-90's layout) it had been purchased by Norfolk and Western.   Illinois Terminal locos and cabooses are fairly rare and tend to be more expensive (though I hope to paint one myself someday), but N&S examples are cheaper and more common.

-Karl