ExactRail HO scale FMC 50-foot plug-door boxcar
A new run of FMC 5,327-cubic-foot capacity boxcars with 12-foot plug doors is available from ExactRail. The HO scale Evolution Series cars feature plastic and formed wire detail parts, metal wheelsets, and Kadee no. 58 couplers.
FMC produced the 5,327-cubic-foot capacity boxcar with 10'-6" and 12'-0" plug doors in 1979. Original owners of the 12'-0" plug-door cars included the Chattahoochee Industrial RR; East Camden & Highland (EACH); Minnesota, Dakota & Western; and New Orleans Public Belt RR.
Our sample is decorated as Green Bay & Western (GBW) no. 10044, part of the railroad’s 10000 through 10099 series. The cars were originally part of EACH’s 2351-2499 series, built by FMC under Lot 18011 in April 1979. The boxcars came to the GBW in three groups: 10000-10024 in October 1981, 1002510049 in April 1982, and 10050-10099 in November 1983.
During their time on the GBW, the boxcars were typically assigned to paper loading at the Consolidated Papers plants in Biron, Stevens Point, and Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. The cars stayed on the GBW roster until 1991.
The ExactRail model has a one-piece injection-molded plastic body with a separate X-panel roof. A steel weight is glued to the car’s interior.
Factory-applied parts on the boxcar include plastic ladders, stirrup steps, end tack boards, and door rods; wire grab irons; and see-through plastic crossover platforms. The bottom door tracks are separate plastic parts attached to stand-offs.
Underneath, the car has molded nailable steel floor, brake pipe, crosstie, and body bolster detail. The center sills, crossbearers, and narrow-style draft-gear boxes are molded as a single unit. The air reservoir, brake cylinder, control valve, and associated rods, pipes, and levers are molded as part of the casting but look like freestanding parts.
The draft-gear box covers are separate, screw-mounted pieces with shank wedges, striker casting, and nut-and-bolt detail. The ends of a few of the crossbearers cause the sill to bow out slightly.
The boxcar is equipped with American Steel Foundries 100-ton Ride Control trucks. The three-piece trucks consist of a bolster with brake beam and brake shoe detail and sideframes with plastic stubs. The sideframes have raised foundry data.
The faded orange and white paint on our sample is smooth and evenly applied. The car has bright orange patches in the upper left corner, where the EACH name and herald were located on the full-size car; under the GBW reporting mark and road number; and on the body panel below the last two digits of the car number, where the Leased From Itel Rail stencil would have been. There’s also a light gray patch in the white stripe on the right side of the car. This is where the map of Arkansas with callouts for Little Rock and the Highland Industrial Park was located on the prototype car.
Stencil placement matches prototype photos of GBW cars from this series that I found online. The Plate C stencil was omitted. It should be where the tack board is. On the GBW cars, the route and tack boards were on the door, not the car side.
I compared the model to prototype data published in the January 1983
Official Railway Equipment Register. Most of the dimensions match or are within scale inches of the prototype. The distance over the coupler pulling faces is approximately 21 ⁄2 scale feet too short. That’s because the model lacks the end-of-car cushioning units found on the prototype.
I tested the ExactRail FMC 5327 boxcar on our HO scale Wisconsin & Southern Troy Branch staff layout, which features 30" radius curves and no. 5 turnouts. The car ran smoothly while being pushed and pulled in a train, and it navigated turnouts in both directions without incident. The manufacturer’s minimum recommended radius for the boxcar is 22".
Blog posts on the ExactRail website cover some of the production struggles the company has dealt with over the past few years. It’s nice to see the firm have product in the pipeline again. If this factory-patched FMC 5327 boxcar is an example things to come, we have a lot to look forward to from ExactRail. – Cody Grivno, group technical editor