Virginia Central Boxcars

I had some custom made Virginia Central boxcar decals made a few years ago and sell them occasionally. I do have the VC running on my layout and it is a real short line that ran in the Fredericksburg area until the mid 1980's.  My entire Virginia Midland line is actually the real VC line from the 1930's!  In the last 10 years, Atlas and Athearn have run green VC schemes on boxcars. Many years ago, Details West even did a VC green boxcar.  I sold a set of my VC decals to Jon Alaniva back a few years ago and he sent me a pic of the complete VC boxcar recently.

Here's his description of what boxcar he used and what he did from emails:

September 2014:

The decals arrived in today's mail. They look good.
 
I think I mentioned that the Exact Rail Evans-USRE 5277 appears to be the correct car for these. I plan on getting one at the end of the month; unfortunately there are no undecs available, so I'll strip one. The newer water based paints peel off pretty well in a bath of 90% isopropyl alcohol. 
 
If I remember correctly #1275 has a Superior door, which will save me some work. If I'm wrong, I have a pair of doors left over from an Atlas 5077 that I scratch-built Superior doors for to use for a "standard" sliding door.
 
I will send you pictures when it's done.

This past January 2017

Quite a while ago I got a set of decals from you for a Virginia Central boxcar. Just thought I'd share with you that I did finish it over the Christmas holidays. It came out quite well.

 

Removing the door from the ER model was a real pain - the plastic is .096" thick so I quite literally had to cut it out. Doors are from an Atlas 5077. The other modification is to remove the door stiffener on the sill. Other than that I'd say that the ER model was the best starting point for doing the model.

Here is Jon's completed #1275

Here the real VC #1275 ( Sam Beck photo)

These are the Atlas/Athearn/Details West cars that were done.  I've never seen a VC picture of one of these types.

Ex-VC boxcars still running the rails (Curt Beal photo)

Another Ex-VC now MQT 1025 still earning it's keep (Roberto Alaniz photo)

Other types/schemes of VC boxcars

Another number in the red scheme

VC in the early days!