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Background: The Pennsylvania Road served the industrial East and Midwest. They owned a huge quantity of rolling stock. Typically, a successful car design was reproduced in the thousands and even tens of thousands. The X-31 series was an extremely successful design innovation for the Pennsy. The development of the X-31 series started out as a design that would increase the cubic capacity of the typical boxcar of the post WWI era. Boxcars of that era had an inside height ranging from 8’6” to maybe 9’4”. This was due to the fact that the Association of American Railroads placed restrictions on car sized based upon typical clearances observed on its member railroads. The Pennsy had few restrictions and decided to push the envelope and build a car that had a 10’0” interior height. This height breaker was the X-31. The first examples of the car came out of the Pennsy’s shops in 1932. The design was very successful with approximately 12,500 round roof cars of the X-31, X-32 and X-33 classes being built. The basic design evolved and variations were created to meet shipper’s demands. The X-31a was first built in 1934 as a single door variant for general merchandise service. This is the second in a series of PRR round roof cars kits produced by Ultra Scale. The X-31a cars were numbered in the 67400 – 81099 series. The cars were long lasting. In 1944 there were 6672 cars in service. By 1963, the roster had only dropped to 6398 cars in this class. Over half of the PRR round roof boxcars were of the X-31a class. The Norfolk and Western purchased similar single door cars but with a flush roof like the double door Pennsy car. Ultra Scale has produced this variation for the N&W classed B-1. There were similar designs such as the one’s built by Pullman for the Seaboard. There are significant design differences with this car when compared to the Pennsy car. The Pennsy cars were equipped with the 2D-F12 trucks. This truck is unique to the PRR and is very similar to the earlier 2D-F8 except for the F-12 having an elliptical spring in place of one set of coils. We understand the Steve Grabowski plans to produce this truck in Proto48 and O scale in the near future. Proto Craft’s Double Truss AAR is a reasonable stand-in for the correct truck. Painting Suggestions: The Pennsylvania Railroad painted their freight cars a shade of red referred to as “Freight Car Red”. Weaver’s Scalecoat II offers a paint called PRR Freight Car Red. It is a very close match to the prototype drift panel that I obtained from the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society. The entire carbody is painted Freight Car Red. The underframe should be painted black. Poly Scale make an acrylic paint called “Special Oxide Red” SKU # 414354. It is very close to the PRR drift panel.
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