Building a Boxcar Kit: ExactRail PC&F 7633 Appliance Boxcar

Hello, and welcome to something a bit different!

In the last couple years, and especially more recently, I've found myself getting more into model railroading than I have simulators or even going trackside anymore (especially as some of the more interesting engines, signals, cars, etc are killed off). I've been participating in the regional Cornfield Free-mo meets for the last couple years, as well as being part of the local University of Illinois Illini Railroad Club. Between those and train shows in the area, I've been enjoying the hobby - despite how expensive it is!

Model kits are a good way to bring down the cost a little bit, sometimes more than others. Over a year ago, I bought this undecorated kit of an ExactRail PC&F boxcar and have sat on it ever since, with the intent to build and paint it for my own home railroad. I discovered after opening it up that zero exploded parts or instructions of any kind were included, which wasn't really ideal as there were a few particularly small detail parts that I couldn't quite determine where they went. So, I shelved it for the time being. Cue another end-of-year sale at ScaleTrains, and a year after I'd bought the kit, I picked up a few plastic hoppers and, more importantly, an assembled version of this boxcar dressed for the Milwaukee Road. Now I had a perfect item to compare the kit to...

​So, let's build!

In this post, I'll cover basically what all I did to put this car together with accompanying photos. I'm sure others out there probably had the same confusion as I did to find no diagram of any sort when opening this up, so hopefully anyone out there with the same questions for some of the smaller pieces can find the answers they need here.

First step to building this: inventory. We need to see what all we have to work with here. Above is everything included in the box and unpacked from the boxcar itself. Pretty straight forward - we have the main body shell, the underframe, the roof, metal weight, bag of metal wheels and truck sideframes, metal details/couplers bag, and plastic details bag. The wheels are self explanatory, so let's open the other two bags and inventory those parts.

Our plastic parts bag, plus the underframe and roof pieces, are spread out in the photo above. Interestingly, the etched metal crossover platforms are included here and not with the metal hardware bag. So, looking closely at these parts, we have:

• 2 door rails
• 2 door locks/handles
• 2 air hoses
• 2 crossover platforms (one with brake-chain hole)
• 2 coupler boxes (draft gear)
• 2 coupler box covers
• 2 flat panels
• 4 short end ladders
• 4 stirrups
• 4 eyelets - beware how small these are, don't lose them!
• 1 brake chain assembly
• 1 brake wheel
• 1 lower brake chain
• 1 triple valve + brake reservoir, wired together
• 1 brake cylinder with extra long wires and small platform
• 1 brake line with two straight supports
• 1 brake line with 1 straight support and 1 angled support

I'm sure some of these items have better more appropriate names, but if you're no expert on every fine detail here, I think these should get the idea across well enough.

Let's look at our hardware bag next:

Much smaller, more simple for sure.

• 2 Kadee 158 couplers
• 2 wire cut levers
• 2 long wire grab irons
• 2 tall, short length wire grab irons
• 2 flathead Phillips-head screws (for couplers)
• 2 rounded Phillips-head screws (for trucks)
• 4 washers
• 16 wire grab irons

Take the time to make sure you have everything together - and don't lose it afterwards. A magnetic tray would probably help a lot in keeping those grab irons together. We'll be using every part seen in these two photos, so you don't want to be missing any of them.

In terms of tools, I didn't grab a photo, but it's pretty straight forward modeling tools. These included an X-acto knife, Tamiya Extra Thin Plastic Cement (green bottle), CA glue (superglue, extra thin), tweezers, pair of 1-2-3 blocks, screwdrivers (extra-small and small Phillips heads, the two sets of screws are differently sized), and of course, a good cutting mat.

Okay, let's get into this properly!

First things first, our two tiny door latches and the door railings will go in on the sides here. There are holes pre-drilled for all parts in this kit, including these. The door latch - the longest one on the left side of the door - isn't so much a hole as it is a slot, but it'll fit in. As always, test fit your parts dry before any gluing - if they aren't fitting and it doesn't seem like cementing them in will make them, that's when you want to have a closer look. I test fitted both of these and they went in smoothly - a small application of cement got those in place just fine, and within just a few minutes they were solid. Do this to both sides of the car and you'll be set.

Now, we can get to the ends. For the most part, they're fairly simple. This side, the B-end, is the more complex of them as it houses the brake wheel and chain, but they're very simple. After a dry test fit, the ladders, brake chain and wheel, and the flat board piece went in smoothly. Just a little plastic cement and we were set. Nothing complex here, and nothing instructions really need to tell you, either.

Starting to look more like a boxcar already, isn't it? The ladders are very thin, so don't put too much pressure on them, but they go in easily - especially with cement in the holes. That leaves a few holes left here - the bottom four are for the end platform obviously, but we'll tackle that in a moment. First, the upper three need to be dealt with - time for your CA glue and long wire grabs! Plus one of those insanely tiny eyelets.

I toyed with putting the little eyelet on the boxcar first versus stringing it through the wire grab first. Ultimately, I chose the latter.

It's very fiddly, but some tweezers make the job a lot easier - just be careful not to let either piece out of your grip, or else you may never see them again!

Doing that twice over will complete both ends of the car. I found that cementing the eyelet hole first made the job easiest - while it cures, you can move it around a little to make sure both ends of the wire grabs slot into their holes. Once you've got that, just make sure the eyelet is straight - tweezers again make the job much easier. A little bit of CA glue into the wire grabs (and I mean a little) will secure that whole assembly easily. Just do it to both ends and you're looking good.

Now, we return to the sides. Two things: all 16 of your wire grabs as well as the four plastic stirrups. I did each set in one go - cement the stirrup, then CA the wire grabs in place. It's fairly straight forward, and just takes a careful application of CA to complete.

Job done there. A bit of glue cleanup is needed, but that's also pretty easy - and the main use for the hobby knife for this project. I hadn't used CA glue very much at all before this, so my technique was very much a work-in-progress. It got better towards the end though!

Now we can go ahead and put in those crossover platforms. Take note that the B-end with the brake equipment needs the platform with the gap in it.

Optionally, you could leave these parts out - if you're going to build and paint immediately after, that's actually the right move. However, I won't be painting mine for a long time, so I'd rather deal with masking later rather than risk misplacing the part. Something to consider, though.

With the grab irons on each side done, the door rail/latches in, and the end details all finished, we're in a good spot now. That does mean it's time to turn the model over and start working on the brake plumbing...

This is where having that Milwaukee car to compare to makes a huge difference. The underframe here comes loosely attached but does come out, so take it out and make sure it has been oriented properly. Compare with photos and, if you have one, an example car. The key is that there's a set of holes on the main body shell where the triple valve + air reservoir go (middle-lower right). They aren't the holes in the central line up the car, but one tiny hole and one larger hole. You want the part of the underframe with most detail to be on the opposite side of this - see where on the underframe there's a bit that crosses the two main beams, with two tiny holes on it? And where there's an extra hole that sticks out from one beam? Those need to be faced away from the triple valve holes.

You can better see what I mean here. Note the piping on the MILW yellow car, and note where the holes are on my undecorated car. Most of the underframe details should face towards the A-end of the car, away from the triple valve location. Before you glue this in, test fit some of the larger brake pieces to really make sure you've lined it up - if things aren't lining up right, double check. The underframe fits in the car both directions, so it's up to you to make sure it really fits.

This is where those 1-2-3 blocks come in handy. If you don't have these, get yourself a set - they're just steel blocks that are 1" x 2" x 3", hence the name. They offer good weight and can help make sure parts are held tightly during gluing, or just holding their shape - makes those 90 degree right angles needed for most buildings easier to do!

Onto the brake equipment itself. Here's the triple valve + reservoir test fit - I could get the valve to sit nicely, but the reservoir did not slot into the little hole well at all. Even on the decorated MILW car, it wasn't flush, so I took a sanding stick to the base and sanded the side the reservoir butts up against down until it did sit flush.

Much better. It's a tricky angle to get into, but it was worth the effort to me. I did a little extra cleanup then made sure the other side would go down and leave the side I was working on flush. It did, with a little pressure, so some cement and pressure were applied until everything was well-seated.

Now for the brake cylinder and its associated plumbing. These wires are finicky for sure, but you can see where the parts go at least. The cylinder has a hole it goes into, and the central bar across the two frame beams has holes as well. Test fit first, then cement.

Looking good already! Now comes a trickier part, which is getting the wires where they're meant to go. First, the shorter one - see it comes over to the triple valve and its wires? It's meant to connect. The easiest thing to do is glue the side of the wire to the side of the double wires linking into the valve itself. I found I needed to use some pressure farther down the wire to keep it in place while I applied glue with my other hand.

Holding in place until it sets is the trickiest part, I think. It took a few tries for it to set, and I switched from cement to CA eventually as the cement just wasn't working. That finally did the trick, and with a little extra cement there and under the triple valve for good measure, we could look to securing the rest of the wiring in place.

You'll note that there are little channels where the wires are meant to travel along - you can see one plain as day in the above photo on the crossmember that the air reservoir is connected to. There's four of these, and a little glue will keep the wire in place in all of them. Two on each side of the car - I once again started with cement then switched to CA after finding the cement not doing much here. Maybe a different type of plastic in play here? Either way, once secure, I felt it was time to move on.

Now we can turn our attention to the taller grab irons. These two sit over that central bar the brake cylinder is hooked on to, of course with pre-drilled holes. I found these holes and the grabs themselves were certainly shallow and it was extraordinarily easy to knock them out of place. It took a little extra time to make sure I was able to apply my CA glue without knocking them, but I eventually got them nice and secure. Trickier than it seems, but doable. Just be patient.

Right, now for the parts I had the most trouble with. This is something I will talk about more in a sort of review of the Milwaukee car in the background, but the next two parts to go in are these brake lines that hang down real low. In fact, so low, that they interfere with the train car operations and got my train stuck on a test run, and then they damaged themselves at the ends. So, with that knowledge in hand, I set out to get these put in a little better than the RTR edition.

Once again, cement wasn't cutting it for the left side here, so a health dose of CA was applied with this set of tweezers to help weigh it down. Cement did get the two little knobs on this angled piece into the two holes of the frame below it though. On the right, though, is where trouble begins. I found that the wire wasn't long enough to allow the post to stand up straight, causing the wire to bend upwards - or rather, downwards when placed on the track. It was so low that when I test fit the trucks it was hanging well below them. Absolutely no good.

I grabbed a sanding stick and sanded down the bottom (the top when the car is right side up) down and just ignored the hole for the most part. The post was able to sit on the crossmember straighter when the hole was ignored, and being shaved down helped. I'm not sure how much material I took off, but it wasn't a crazy amount by any means. The key was to remove as much of the bend out of that wire as I could, I was able to get it down enough so it wouldn't interfere with the trucks or catch on switches, diamonds on a layout. Both this piece and the other one with two vertical posts suffered the exact same problem and required sanding down and purposeful misplacement - these parts were just not molded well and the posts were made too tall, plain and simple. It's my only real complaint about the parts in this kit and the RTR model. The wire is literally too short, the parts don't fit properly at all - they clearly didn't even fit right in the factory on the RTR model either!

​To be honest, the wire with two vertical posts should just be replaced entirely with something better. The other part, with the angled piece that hooks into the frame, maybe snip the wire off and replace just the wire and single vertical post. Maybe some brass wire and styrene could make something better - and that would be less obvious, since these stick out too far down based on real photos anyways. I wound up just working with the parts I had, but this is something to consider for yourself. Depending on how I feel about it when I get to the painting stage, I might end up doing something like that anyways... but we'll see.

After dealing with both of those unruly plumbing parts, we're back to the B-end of the car. Here, we'll attach the lower side of the brake chain with the two holes in the bottom. beside the draft gear. Speaking of draft gear, we'll also go ahead cement those in on both sides. Some people might choose to opt for fancier draft gear - I know some people die on the hill of Moloco draft gear - but as it's not something I really notice or worry about much at all, I'm satisfied with the parts included here. These are nice and easy to slot in, as there are guide holes for them as well.

This is essentially the completed underframe - long, annoying brake plumbing included and all. I didn't show pictures of the other plumbing that sticks out, but it's essentially the same as the other. If you've gotten this far, you can figure that out, I'm sure.

We're nearing the finish line. The draft gear lid gets an air brake hose cemented on, then screwed onto the draft gear itself once a coupler is fitted. The flathead screws with the larger Phillips head will secure these into place - be sure you don't cement the lid to the draft gear itself. The point of the screw is that this and the coupler are removable and adjustable!

Like before with the crossover platforms, this is an area to think about if you're going to paint shortly after building this car. If you are, I would recommend a "shop coupler" - something cheap and not a nice Kadee 158. You don't want to paint the coupler, or mask it. Classic junky X2F Horn-hook couplers are a perfect shop coupler here. Additionally, wait to glue the brake hose in place if you go this route, as the hose needs some black and silver paint carefully applied to it. I'm gluing everything in place here just because it will be a very long time until I get to painting, so it helps mitigate the risk of misplacing these tiny parts.

Of course, you'll want to do this on both sides. But, we have just a final detail to put in place here - remember those tiny eyelets? You're putting them in again. On each end of the car, a tiny hole on the opposite side of the brake hose can be found - you'll want to place the eyelets in here. This is again really finicky and you should take your time, being careful not to lose these tiny pieces. If you drop one, finding it might be a real tall task. I got lucky when one slipped out of my tweezers and landed in my lap - if that went to the floor, I'd have never seen it again.

The purpose of this eyelet, you ask? The cut levers are mounted through them. These are your final wire grabs, and once the eyelets are nice and secure, you can carefully thread the cut lever through them. The smooth end of the cut lever will get a tiny dab of CA to glue it to the draft gear lid, but this is all. Do not put any glue in the eyelet or anywhere else on the cut lever, as if you need to make any coupler adjustments (such as before/after painting!), you want the lid to be able to move around without placing extra stress on the cut lever. Just gluing the end to the lid will allow you to maneuver the lid around, still essentially connected to the car, if you're careful with it. For the record, I did try slipping the eyelet onto the cut lever and attaching the eyelet to the car like that, but it was way more of a hassle than it was worth.

Now, we can fit the trucks to the car. I tried mounting the trucks without the washers and found they just weren't really tightening to my liking, so I put two of the included washers on each bolster. Your mileage may vary here or you may have a preferred washer over the included ones, but it worked better for me this way. I checked the Milwaukee car and found it also had the washers on the bolster.

The trucks themselves go together easily. I didn't show them before, but it's as simple as fitting the wheels into the truck bodies. Very easy. These trucks are very malleable, an interesting feature, but that appears normal based on the trucks on the MILW car. I tightened both trucks to the bolsters to my liking - one tight enough to prevent any side-to-side rocking but loose enough to still pivot normally, while the other truck was given a little bit of extra tolerance to allow for some of that rocking. This is the classic 3-point suspension that helps prevent body wobble, so the car shouldn't shake or shimmy when on the layout. You can test this by placing the car on a piece of track and giving it a little push from the side - if it comes back down without wobbling around, you're looking good. Adjust to your liking, at any rate, as some go with different methods than the 3-point suspension - whatever works best for you.

Coming very close to the finish line now. This car has been crazy light, so we can finally give it some weight at last. A healthy smattering of glue will keep that weight in place at the bottom of the car. I don't see any reason to remove this weight, so I just hit it with plenty of CA and dropped it in place. We'd only ever be adding weight, not removing it, so that should do just fine.

Gotta make sure the weight is weighed down during gluing... looking more like a gondola right now with these in there, eh?

Last but not least, the roof goes in. A little cement around the inside edges of the car, along the ridges the roof sits on, and we can seat the roof in easily. Make sure it's fully flush with the outer edge of the car - the roof doesn't go on top of the car as much as it goes in between the car walls. You'll see there's ridges on the two longer sides of the car that allow the roof to sit there. You may have to use a little force and also forcibly bow the car outwards a touch to get it in right, but as always, don't go crazy with it. It should go in without too much trouble.

And now we're done! Save for painting/decals, this car is complete! A few photos of the finished product...

That about does it here. If I was going to paint immediately after building, I would have left a few things off and replaced others - some cheap plastic trucks and couplers as "shop" units, and keeping the air hoses and end platforms off until after paint, but as mentioned before, I won't be painting for a rather long time as I've yet to master that skill, or practice it at all really. I'll be pulling couplers and trucks plus masking off the other parts when it comes time to paint, but that'll be in good time.

Anyways, I hope you found that interesting or useful, or both. This is a bit different compared to the usual stuff I post here, but as it is all railroad related in some sense, I think it fits well enough. You'll probably see more about model railroading stuff on here in the future, but shy of maybe a dedicated page for some specific model-related photos, it will probably only exist in the blog part of the site, at least for now.

I have a few future projects in mind already - I'm aiming to take an in depth look at some old Durango Press Mark IV RoadRailer and AdapterRailer kits and look at how to re-design some parts of them to modern standards, allow for Bowser trailer compatibility, and expand into the production-era Mark IV units. I also have a kit for an A-Line Gunderson Twin Stack "Viking Ship" wellcar 5-pak, which should be a particularly interesting project! I need a few more parts, including some additional truck sets, but that will be an interesting long-term project. I need to invest some time and money on some tools for painting these builds and learn about that to give these a good finish, but I've already got a few more things I want to pick up and build... All in good time.

In any case, that's all I have today. Expect to see more from this side of the hobby appear here over time! I want to give my thoughts on some model railroading products I've picked up, and I want to post some project stuff as I work on more of those. Lots of fun stuff to come.

Thanks for reading!

​SM