11/11/11
The canstock box cars are in stock and shipping!

 

11/8/2011
The canstock box cars will be available at Trainfest!!!
All four paint schemes plus some undec kits of our canstock cars will be available at Trainfest 2011.  You have to see the cars to believe them.  Stop by our booth and say, "Hi!"


10/20/2011
The canstock box cars have arrived!
The cars look incredible and new photos will be posted.  The cars are being QC'd and labeled.  For those that made a deposit, an email for the balance will be coming soon.

8/6/2011
New photos of our second set of test shot cars have been posted.
Improved items include:

• Vertical brake levers

• New style of cut levers

• B&O car will have slotted crossover platforms

• Chessie and CSX cars will have circle-hole crossover platforms

• Retainer valve and related hardware moved to the correct side of the car

Click on the picture to see more
photos of the test shot car.

6/11/2011

Spring Mills Depot is proud to announce the Pullman Standard Canstock Box Car as our very own first signature car in HO scale.

Click here for our flyer.

B&O box car designers in the late 1960s were looking for a better way to transport canstock.  Canstock is thin steel or aluminum used for can making.  After several test designs, the B&O approached Pullman Standard to build a box car using the data the B&O had collected.  In 1972, the result was a 50' box car with a severely offset 12' 6" door opening.  The doors on the car were not identical as one door opened to the right and the other to the left and each door has unique latching hardware.  Additionally, a fiberglass roof panel was used on the 4th panel from the B end of the car to allow light in the car as the doors were located at the opposite end.

Objectives of the Car and Why the End-Door Design
Click the image below to see original B&O public relations material describing
the objectives of the car and showing graphically why the end-door design
allowed two more canstock coils to be loaded into a 50' box car.


Midway through the Chessie era, many of the cars were shopped, painted and the fiberglass panel was replaced with a steel panel.

Early in the CSX era, all cars had new style of doors installed and any remaining fiberglass panels were replaced with a steel panel.

Only 75 Pullman Standard canstock cars were ever built.  However, the canstock cars have been photographed all across the United States.  There are many photos of the cars on the internet showing them in California, Denver, Texas, Chicago, Ohio, and all up and down the east coast.

Spring Mills Depot will offer the Chessie car in two versions: early-mid Chessie with an off-white fiberglass roof panel and mid-late Chessie with a blue steel roof panel.  The B&O and Chessie cars will have the correct original doors and the CSX version will have the CSX doors.  The models will be Ready To Run and feature crisp detail and sharp painting and details. The models will have wire grabs, metal wheels, separately applied door tracks, and Kadee ® couplers.  The undecorated kits will be sans couplers, have all 4 different doors, 2 different roof panels, 2 different crossover platforms, and the price is $39.95.

Pictures of our test shot cars can be seen here:

PS Canstock - B&O Click on the picture to see more photos of the test shot car.	PS Canstock - early-mid Chessie Click on the picture to see more photos of the test shot car.
PS Canstock - CSX Click on the picture to see more photos of the test shot car.	PS Canstock - undec Click on the picture to see more photos of the test shot cars.

If you wish to order any cars with us, you have two options: