Prototype & Model
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Prototype & Model |
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The trigger for this project was a posting on the Hungarian Model Railway Newsgroup in Fall 2004. Somebody asked me which cars my steam locomotive models want to haul. All of the locos model a prototype in the 1930s. No car models are available from this era, especially no Hungarian ones. The German company Piko offers a few models of old Hungarian four wheeled cars that show nicely in a train hauled by a steamer, but their prototypes with one exception did not participate in the Hungarian Railroading of the 1930. The exception is the Piko' s dual barrel wine car that had a very similar prototype indeed. The main difference between the prototype and the model lies in the frame and running gear: Piko simply applied their "standard" frame below this model and that has nothing to do with the original one. The other Piko freight cars of Hungarian prototypes, the white beer-refrigerator car with "Italian" roof, the standard tank car both have a prototype, but the beer car's prototype came to Hungary during WW2, the tank car was made in the 1950s.
The Hungarian railways, as well as other European ones, operated a large number of four wheeled short boxcars, probably these formed the most numerous Classes. In Hungary, like in the member states of the Germany led Central European Railway Association the Class number for these car was "G" (from the German "Gedeckter Güterwagen"). All these G-cars of the Association members were constructed by similar principles, these were published and recommended by the Association. Thus it seemed to be an easy task to repaint a Piko boxcar with Hungarian colors and add scripts. I started to investigate besides the painting what else would be needed for such a transformation.
I did not foresee how big avalanche was kicked out by this! The old saying became true: the more exact you want to rebuild a model, the bigger and more basic changes will be necassary up to the point, when a total scratchbuilding becomes more affordable!
I did not believe first this would be true for such a simple car. But this was not true. As the expert of the railway history, Mr. György Villányi explained me: in the WW2 there were many trains in Hungary with mixed German and Hungarian rolling stock. It was always an easy task to spot the Hungarian boxcars in the train, they differed definitely from the German ones. Who wants to build a Hungarian boxcar model from a German one has to know all these differences.
In these Webpages I describe the building Hungarian boxcars. First a rebuilding of a Piko boxcar with all differences from the German original. I try to get a model the resembles to a Hungarian boxcar with minimal amount of compromises. The other pages show scratchbuilt boxcars with a minimal amount of compromises.
The Model
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This page was updated last time on January 16, 2005
© János Erö