Hello my name is George Toman and I am an HO scale modeler. I stumbled across your group looking for freight car information. I am looking for more information on FFF freight cars and how to model these. Are there decals available to model these. What color paint to use for the is it a Tan and Brown? Did these have Dureya underframes? Thanks George Toman
Welcome to the Frisco website, George!!! I can't answer your questions, but you found the right website. There are several members that can help you. Joe
Howdy, George, and welcome aboard. From your tan and brown reference, I think you're referring to the FFF "circle" logo on the older, rebuilt USRA double-sheathed boxcars, rather than the later, slanted "Frisco Faster Freight?" Best Regards,
George, I'll go ahead and work with the former. There's a B/W photo from Gary A.; it's photo 00837 in his post: 40' Boxcar Rebuild I have one of the old Sunshine kits that notes the following in the instructions: "The prototype brown and tan paint has no perfect match among the available hobby paints. The brown was dark, much like a chocolate bar. Check the color of the brown decals [came w/the Sunshine kit; I picked up the kit w/out decals] for guidance. You may wish to lighten the color...the tan was light, bordering on a light gray." I am about 95% certain that none of the FFF "billboard" cars had Duryea underframes but would have to either research further or wait for others to add their input. As an aside, how would the rest of you pronounce "Duryea?" I work with a fellow with this last name, and his family pronounces it "DURR-yee." I asked him if he had any railroad equipment designers/manufacturers in his family, which elicited a rather puzzled look, so I suspect he's not kin. Best Regards,
George - Welcome to frisco.org. It's a fine group, nice people, lots of Frisco knowledge available. Walthers used to offer a nice set of HO "FFF" decals for the tan rebuild. No longer available I'm afraid. I do have a single set for one side of the car, but not for the other. I built one long ago using the TM car and the Walthers decal set had enough decals sheets for three sides, which is why I have the one. The TM decorated car was not so good. They appear often on eBay. Atlas recently (~ 5 yrs ago) did one in HO which was very nice, but is hard to find. I had one until about six months ago when I sold it to one of our members. You could contact Atlas to see if they still have a few in inventory; or better yet, to ask them to do another run! Ken
Welcome aboard, George. BTW, it's Gary A. I believe those cars referred to were USRA rebuilds, so not Duryea underframes. The aforementioned Steam Era Freight cars site (one of my favorites) has this list: http://steamerafreightcars.com/prototype/frtcars/protoduryeamain.html
