40ft and 36ft Boxcar Mega Pack

[SeinfeldRules]

Hello all,

For the past month I've been working on a boxcar mega pack using Michael Stephan's excellent 40ft and 36ft freeware boxcars and provided repaint kit. I have managed to reskin over 150 individual boxcars (that is not a typo!) representing 68 different railroads. Among those are over 20 boxcars representing the Columbia Valley Pacific RR, one of my favorite routes. Obviously this is far too many cars to take screenshots of, so I made you all a video instead, showcasing my work: https://youtu.be/eJvzfsvYB7g

The majority of these boxcars are based off pictures I've found off model railroading sites. I've adapted the schemes as best as I can, as I had to work around the numbering and lettering embedded in the model. The upside of this is that ALL cars work with the auto-numbering system, greatly enhancing scenario play IMO. No baked in car numbers or transparencies! I am by no means an expert on freight cars, so these are probably not "prototypical". I merely tried to capture the flavor of the heyday of American railroading where a freight train could be seen hauling a mess of boxcars from all sorts of foreign roads. I intend to release everything together in one convenient package for the scenario creator. Hopefully these boxcars will find a good home on routes like the Springfield Line and Wasatch Grade.

Below is an album and screenshots of cars up close, as well as the CVP boxcars I've been working on. I have PSD templates for all the cars I've created, and if anyone is interested, I would be more then happy to discuss my process.

https://imgur.com/a/yHfPZ94








I'm still working on tweaking some of my earlier designs, as my skills have improved and I want to make some changes. But the vast majority of them are ready for release, just need to clean up the details and any dependency issues.

If there are any boxcars or roads you've always been dying to see in game, provide a link to a good picture and I can work on re-creating it. I'm always looking for inspiration and my templates make the work easy.

Below is the list of railroads represented. Feedback appreciated!

36ft Boxcars:

Alabama Tennesse and Northern RR
Baltimore and Ohio
Chicago and Illinois Midland RR
Chicago and Northwestern RR
Chesapeake and Ohio
Columbia Valley Pacific
Duluth Missabe and Iron Range
Duluth South Shore and Atlantic RR
The MILW Road
MKT
Missouri Pacific
Muncie and Western RR
New Haven
Nickel Plate Road
Norfolk and Western
New York Central
Rome Watertown and Ogdensburg RR
Savannah and Atlanta RR
SOO Line
Southern RR
Southern Pacific
The Cotton Belt


40ft Boxcars:

Ann Arbor
Alaska Railroad
Atlantic Coast Line
Atlantic and Danville
Atlantic and East Carolina
Buffalo Creek RR
Baltimore and Ohio
Black River Paper Company
Chicago and East Illinois
Chicago and Illinois Midland RR
Chicago and Northwestern RR
Chesapeake and Ohio
Columbia Valley Pacific
Denver and Rio Grande
Detroit Toledo and Ironton RR
Florida East Coast RR
The Frisco
Gulf Mobile and Ohio
Grand Trunk Western
Illinois Central
American Colloid Company
Lake Superior and Ishpeming RR
Leigh Valley
Maine East Central
MKT
Missouri Pacific
Minneapolis and St Louis RR
Muncie and Western RR
Nashville Chattanooga and St Louis RR
Nickel Plate Road
Northern Pacific
New York Central
Pittsburgh and Lake Erie
Fruit Growers Express Co
Reading RR
Railway Express Agency
Rock Island RR
Seaboard Air Line
SOO Line
Southern RR
Southern Pacific
The Cotton Belt
Toronto Hamilton and Buffalo RR
ThermIce RR
Texas and Pacific
Toledo Peoria and Western RR
Union Pacific
US Army
Virginian RR
Vermont Railway
Wabash
Western Maryland
Western Pacific

[harryadkins]

Wow - great work!

[jgvaughan]

Definitely looking forward to these.

[Fireexplorer249]

I'm really looking forward to these. Very nice job!

[minerman146]

Holy Hanna! Those are swell!

[ZekTheKid]

Keeping my eyes on this...

[wopflyer]

Awesome work! Thank you for doing all of this. I'm looking forward to downloading these.

[wacampbell]

The cars look great! I really like the CVP paint schemes you've come up with.

[GreatNortherner]

This is for me the best news in train simming in a long while. I'm not kidding!

What a wonderful train of boxcars! So colorful, so many fallen flags. And so many cars, and every one of them is looking very good indeed!



Cheers,
Michael

[QcRail]

Hello all,

For the past month I've been working on a boxcar mega pack using Michael Stephan's excellent 40ft and 36ft freeware boxcars and provided repaint kit. I have managed to reskin over 150 individual boxcars (that is not a typo!) representing 68 different railroads. Among those are over 20 boxcars representing the Columbia Valley Pacific RR, one of my favorite routes. Obviously this is far too many cars to take screenshots of, so I made you all a video instead, showcasing my work: https://youtu.be/eJvzfsvYB7g

Awesome for sure. I know How long it takes me to do a typical repaint (excluding the search of information) and multiplying that span of life by 150 Bravo...

Now, you have given me the challenge to continue with more repaints : reefers, tank cars etc. May the paint brush be with us.

QcRail

[ozinoz]

[SeinfeldRules]

Thank you for the kind comments everyone! Just trying to provide to the community. I will be uploading the folders to dropbox soon as a "beta" but without any sort of installer so people can at least play and provide feedback... that way people don't have to wait for a more polished release here on RWA!

@wopflyer, I saw you sent me a PM but I am too new to the forums to read it.... (edit: disregard, I have access to it now!)

@QcRail, I've gotten my process down to about 30 minutes per car, using a pretty good template developed from the one that came with the kit. I can share some of my tips for areas that slow you down if you'd like.

[QcRail]

Thank you for the kind comments everyone! Just trying to provide to the community. I will be uploading the folders to dropbox soon as a "beta" but without any sort of installer so people can at least play and provide feedback... that way people don't have to wait for a more polished release here on RWA!

@QcRail, I've gotten my process down to about 30 minutes per car, using a pretty good template developed from the one that came with the kit. I can share some of my tips for areas that slow you down if you'd like.

Thanks for the offer, but I also use templates and other tricks that I have created for a specific rail car and which I can import to another .PSD file when needed. Another trick : one can duplicate a layer to an new model or .PSD file project.

Yes, tweaking graphics may be long, but historical research is longer and we cannot forget time to prepare a .rwp file project for import with double checks to minimize glitches

Keep up the good work
QcRail

[SeinfeldRules]

Hello all,

Over the past week I've added several new railroads and cars to the 40 ft boxcar collection:

https://imgur.com/a/O1QClUM



New railroads include:


American Colloid Company
Canadian Pacific
Canadian Pacific Lake and River Service (semi fictional, designed for use on CVP)
Dunder Mifflin Paper Company (fictional, obviously)
West India Fruit and Steamship Company
Kansas Oklahoma and Gulf
Raritan River
Lackawana
Western Railway of Alabama
Louisville and Nashville
Richmond, Fredricksburg and Potomac
Rutland
Atlanta and West Point
Central of Georgia

And new cars for the Illinois Central and SAL.

...And what I'm sure everyone has been waiting for, I've uploaded a "beta" version of the 40 ft boxcars to Dropbox, here is the link: http://bit.ly/3a1cQHG

You should be able to drop the contents of the zip file into your Railworks folders, but let me know if anyone has any trouble installing. You will also have to download and install the shared files from Golden Age of Rails, here: http://www.golden-age-rails.com/freerw/ ... dFiles.zip

I hope it all works, please let me know if you experience any errors, and please feel free to upload some screenshots of the boxcars being utilized if you want! All credit goes to Michael Stephan for his great models and re-paint kit!

Adam

[wacampbell]

Thanks! Your files installed no problem. The cars look and work great!

Wayne

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