I was bored last night, waiting for glue to dry on a locomotive project, so I started looking for something to cut up.  When the muse is upon me, strange things have been known to happen.  In this case, I came across an old Life-Like 40' box car that a friend had given me.  If you've never seen these cars, they're the best sort of toy train junk - out of proportion, clunky details, holes in the body to mount the frame, and of course really crappy trucks and couplers.

Here's one I found on E-bay:

Mine happened to be painted BN green, and neither alcohol nor decal remover would touch the lettering.  I opted to leave it, and ended up just dissolving the paint with lots of MEK.

First I took a hack saw (yeah, the one I use for cutting steel in the garage) and chopped the roof off, just above the top of the sides.  That removed the top door guide as well - no loss.  I cleaned up the cut and glued the roof back on, now about 3" lower.

Next, I took out a little over 1' from the body.  I simply cut out one ladder rung's worth (also exactly 4 rivets and one end corrugation).  I cleaned the cuts and glued it all back together again.  No splice plates or anything fancy, just plenty of MEK on a long paint brush, inside and out.

The next job was to cut away the tabs below the sides.  That left the frame showing, so I trimmed the tabs inside which determine the floor position, along with the tabs on the sides of the floor, then glued the floor into place with the edges of the frame even with the new sides.

I cut the couplers from the trucks, reamed the side frames, and installed Proto-2000 metal wheels.  No sense using my nice semi-scale wheels here, right?  I added some .040" pads for the couplers, and cut notches in the body to match.

Turning to the doors, I trimmed the top tabs off completely, and trimmed the "clips" from the bottom tabs.  I removed two sections from below the tack board on each door, and glued them back together.  Finding them still too tall, I removed another section from above the tack board.  By leaving the horizontal rib and then carefully sanding away about 1/2 its thickness, the joint becomes very difficult to see.  I cut notches in the top rivet strip on the sides to allow the doors to sit flush, then glued the doors in place.  I added a couple scraps to both fill the hole above the door and model the top door tracks on each side.

All told, the car had now gotten about 2' shorter.  A little putty and some scraping with a chisel blade, and this is how it looked:

This morning, I shot the car with some brown primer, followed by whatever clear gloss coat I had in the garage.  Did I mention I'm trying to do this quick and cheap?  No fancy airbrush and model paint here, no sir!

A little research revealed that the car now resembled an ARA 1923/27 (PRR X-29) 40' car, so that's what I'm calling it.  I had some N&W decals on hand, and my friend (who had this car since he was a kid, by the way) loves the N&W, so that's what it became.

Here it is, fresh from the paint shop.  I still need to thin the sill steps, add couplers, paint the trucks, and weather the car.

I have to say, I'm pleased with how well the car has turned out.  I think I'm going to start hacking up some of my (too numerous) Athearn 40' cars.  I really like the low-slung look of this car, and I think it suits my era and layout better than the larger AAR 1937 cars.