Removing roof walks/running boards

Hi all!

I'm switching gears with this topic.  A while ago, a viewer of one of my YouTube videos commented about the roof walks on my Penn Central boxcars, noting that they would have been removed during my layout's era.    Frankly I hadn't thought about that but the feedback motivated me to take a closer look at videos of Penn Central trains (The Green Frog series I own and other films found online) to check that out.  I noticed that the Penn Central boxcars in most trains indeed did not have roof walks while many of the cars from other roads still sported them.  Many of the Penn Central cars looked more modern than the 40 foot cars from some other roads and appeared to never have had a roof walk.   I have ONE car like that on my roster!  (seen below)

Conversations with fellow modelers and some research online yielded impressions, if not primary source information, about the removal of roof walks (also apparently known as running boards) from boxcars in American railroading.   It seems, according to several sources, that the ICC ruled that boxcars ordered after April 1966 and/or delivered after October 1966 were no longer to be fitted with roof walks.  Hand brakes had to be set low so crewmen no longer needed to access the roof to brake a car.  Ladders were cut shorter (as in the photo above).   Presumably this was a movement in the industry to reduce the risk of injuries to crewmen on the car roofs.

 A number of sources noted that there had been a 1974 cut off date for when all roof walks were to be removed, but it was extended beyond the Penn Central era.

So, based on this information I decided to remove some of the roof walks from many of my PC boxcars to reflect the prototype practice of attempting to comply with the new safety reg.   A lot of my PC boxcar fleet are Tyco and Bachmann cars that I upgraded with Kaydee couplers and metal wheelsets.  Most had roof walks that were removable but others are molded on which, of course, makes them impossible to remove w/o damaging the car.   

Examples of removable:

Molded example:

Here's how I worked with the cars that had removable roof walks.   It is easy to pry the roof walks from the top of the car.  Doing so leaves the roof with four holes that accommodated the roof walk installation pegs.   These holes need to be filled in and disguised.  Tools for the job included Green Putty, needle files, some fine grade sandpaper (not pictured), and weathering chalks.

After filling the holes with putty, allowing it to dry, and doing some initial sanding and filing, the now roofwalkless (is that a word!?) cars await more detailed care.

Sanding wore away some of the factory paint on the models, creating black streaks on the roofs that actually look like road-weary weathering to me.    The Green Putty is clearly visible since it is a lighter shade than PC Jade Green.  It couldn't be that easy, of course!

I continued light sanding and filing to remove as much of the putty as possible without re-opening the holes.  I then brushed on rust colored and black artist chalk powder to blend the putty with the roofs.  I don't usually seal chalk weathering with a matte finish spray since that tends to virtually obliterate most of the effects, but I did with these cars and it seemed to turn out OK. 

I'm especially pleased with the way this Bachmann car turned out

 

This was a relatively easy project that yielded satisfying results.  I still run some PC cars that have molded roof walks but I'm content with the idea that the Penn Central just hasn't yet gotten around to removing those yet.  The company certainly had a lot of other issues to worry about!  

Thanks for taking a look!