George S posted:Robert S. Butler posted:George, I checked my references and I can find no mention of a Flyer NKP boxcar with fixed doors and no door handles. However, given Flyer's willingness to ship as long as a difference did not matter to performance I guess I'm not too surprised to hear about something like this. Still, an interesting car.
Thank you Robert. I was really curious about this so I removed the roof. It was hard to get off, and I didn't want to damage this old car. Here is what I found.
The doors are centered. The litho is printed all the way across the other side. So, there are mounting holes for handles on the ends of the doors. They show no signs of ever having handles installed. The cross brace is friction fit into a groove at the top of the car doors. It's manufactured, not custom. The cut, finish, and squareness of the corners are too perfect for a home job. The doors will move once the brace is removed. My other 3008 cars do not have this brace.
Pretty interesting. I like the car regardless and am not hung up on the lack of door handles.
George
I think I figured out what happened here. My new (old) car has two braces just like this one except without rust, but they are on each end of the car. The notches that Dennis mentioned are used to bend the sheet metal down as the top guide of the door. This NKP car only has one of the braces and someone put it in the middle to hold the doors in place. Both doors are missing their handles. I wonder where those went?
George
