Boston & Maine boxcar 77843 was placed on the Thomaston Station display track on Saturday, April 25, 2015. The car was restored to its 1975 appearance by RMNE's volunteer restoration crew.

B&M 77843 was built by Pullman-Standard in July 1956; it is a 50-ton, 50-foot PS-1 car. This car (and others in the series) was reconditioned by B&M in 1975 at their East Deerfield shops. The work then included removal of the original roofwalk and high ladders. It was purchased by RMNE from Guilford Rail Industries (B&M) in 1998.

A leaky roof was the impetus for the car coming into the shop in July 2014, for roof repairs and an "dip job", with a minimal budget. Some obvious "project creep" occurred, and a much nicer restoration resulted. The budget was still reasonable, although the shop time was longer than originally planned.

The "keep it simple and reasonably cheap" plan precluded the restoration of the roofwalks and high ladders, so the car was restored to its appearance as of the mid-70s reconditioning by B&M.

Work done included: patching roof corners and edges with new steel patches welded in, patching the 1975 B&M side patches, repairing rock salt damage to the steel floor, straightening the side doors (mangled and tough to close, they now take just two people and NO come-along to operate), new wood tackboards and steel brackets, roof, sides, ends and truck frames were scraped/sanded/prepped for paint, lettering was carefully measured and photographed for reproduction.

The car was primed and painted with Benjamin Moore industrial paints; color coats were urethane alkyd enamel. Lettering was painted on using stencil masks and the "B&M" herald was a vinyl decal, as originally used in the 1975 rebuild.

The car was primed in Fall 2014 and painted in November. Lettering was done in January 2015, with the final vinyl decals (consolidated stencil and wheel inspection dot) going on in April 2015.

A full COT&S servicing of the AB brake system was also done during the winter.

Some photos:

B&M 77843 at start of work, July 2014:



B&M 77843 ready for primer, Sept. 2014:



B&M 77843 ready for placement on Thomaston Station display track, April 25, 2015:



Final result was a nice freight car restoration and a nice display car at our station. The RMNE shop crew did a great job with this project, and some new people picked up some useful skills for future restorations.

Howard P.

More photos:

Replacing the rusted-out 1975 B&M side patch:



Priming the "B" end of the car. Ya gotta love those manlifts!!!



Car is now primed:



Howard P.

More photos:

After painting the black side sills, trucks, and doors, those areas were masked and then the blue was sprayed.



Stencil masks now applied, for painting the lettering:



Lettering being sprayed:



The lettering was done by working from Dale Nickel's careful photos of the original lettering, cleaning up and converting to a CAD file by Allen Pomeroy and Tony Pratt, and was then cut from low-tack vinyl stencil material by our local sign shop. Tony lead the stencil application crew.

The sign shop also produced the B&M herald vinyl decals, and the consolidated stencils.

Paint application was done with an inexpensive spray gun and a pressure feed pot; the stencil painting used a small Harbor Freight gravity cup gun ($16.00 !!), which worked very nicely with no overspray.

Steel roof repairs and side repairs done by Sam Walker, wood work by Stan Bogatz and his woodshop crew (Win Bissell and Kurt Viener), door straightening using a shop-built clamp rig was done by Rich Bingham and Jay Hartmann. Many others worked on this car and helped make it look so good.

Howard P.
(the painter)

An object lesson about performing a high quality restoration at minimal cost...along with some nice by-products such as skills development, etc.

Dave

Congratulations on a job well done, and a hearty thank you for using the historically correct materials for the lettering. We usually don't want to admit that our brand new restoration is going to dull and fade in the weather... but if the car must remain outside, that's exactly what is going to happen. Using the proper materials, in thirty years, the car will look just like it did thirty years after the B&M applied that paint scheme. However, if the stick-on lettering all falls off in a dozen years, it will look just silly. Since the monogram apparently was an applique, if it peels, it will be historically correct.

.

Beautiful relic of a different era. Well done, RMNE!

Wow, you guys did a great job. So nice to see that dedication to a freight car.

That is probably the most beautiful boxcar in the world. Nice work for the guys restoring it

The car looks fabulous, Howard! My congratulations to the crew.

Howard

beautiful work.

Thanks to all for the kind comments.

We have done our restoration freight car lettering using stencils for 30+ years. I used to cut the things out of oil stencil board, using an X-acto knife and many thin blades. Some of our cardboard stencils used wire ligaments to hold them together, as the railroads did with the old tin stencils.

The ability to CAD draw and clean up the artwork, and send it to a sign shop for stencil cutting, is really tremendous progress-- a time and work-saver for sure.

Howard P.

Beautiful job Howard! Congratulations to you and the crew!

Don

Howard and Company,

Beautiful job, love them freight cars.

Scott

Wish I had a shop like that, NJ

Very nice job! One more car for the photo freight.

Ryan