A Quick Project

 I recently purchased (a lot of) the Rapido 1937 AAR Box Cars. I'm very happy with the models, although as others have noted there are a few discrepancies in terms of the handbrakes. Rapido tooled nine different handbrakes, with housings. Unfortunately it appears that for some of them the wrong one was used during assembly. Not a huge deal to swap them out.

I also purchased a number of the undecorated ones for use in other projects, and each one comes with all nine of them. Most variations are also available from Kadee or Tangent as separate parts, but there are a couple of unique ones in the Rapido models. Hopefully they will make them available as separate parts.

Of course, I needed a bunch of the New Haven cars.  Thankfully, the initial run is of the 1941 delivery scheme with black doors.

The NHRHTA Convention was this weekend, where I picked up three more of the cars. This is a special run for the Association, and they are the first repaint, with the door now the body color. Although I haven't been able to find any documentation as to when this scheme was introduced, the PS-1 box cars built in 1947-8 were delivered with black doors.

Paint schemes in general went through changes c1949 on the New Haven, so maybe sometime in that period? Even though the 1955 aerial photos I have of New Britain are in black & white, you can see a couple of strings of NH box cars, and a few of the cars still appear to have black doors, but more of them don't.  Photo evidence shows that even some of the PS-1s were repainted by 1954. 

I can use both of course. These cars were built in 1941, My initial mix, of six cars in the delivery scheme and three in the repaint is OK for 1946-7 sessions. But I'm focusing on 1953 as my initial sessions, I need more with the repainted door. 

Fortunately, there's a very simple solution for me, and if you pay attention to the photos above you probably know what it is...

With luck, because of the way my layout is designed, you only see one side of any given car, regardless of where it is on the layout. Since the doors are separate parts on the model, I could swap some doors and have six cars that have one black and one repainted door.

The floor of the model is not glued in place. The uncoupling levers are glued to the coupler box cover, so I unscrewed that so it could remain in place when removing the floor. The bell crank is a separate part from the handbrake rod, so I would recommend working the B-end out first. It is glued, but pops right out. The uncoupling lever is flexible enough that you can work the floor out without removing it.

The door is glued in place, but there are pins that align it and can be pressed from inside the car body. As long as one of those breaks the glue seal I could get a small screwdriver underneath the door and pry it off. Swap a door, reassemble, and now I have six with a repainted door on one side, and black door on the other.