The Michigan Interstate era, 1977-1982, saw improved marketing and service efforts by the lease operator of the Ann Arbor Railroad System. They introduced the new Ferry-in-Fog paint scheme and the stylized "AA" lettering, and generally tried their best to boost business and make the railroad profitable. As part of those initiatives, they bought 200 new 50' box cars that were all delivered with the Ferry-in-Fog markings.

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Roundhouse Products started making an N Scale kit version of Ann Arbor box car #5016 sometime in the mid-late 1980s or early 1990s. I bought several of these kits, however in checking the bible (Craig Wilson's treatise on Annie rolling stock), I saw that there were two series of these cars: 5000-5099, and 5100-5199.  The 5100 series was the only one that used the "CUSHION SERVICE" marking, so I realized that the Roundhouse models had the wrong series numbering scheme.

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This was an easy problem to solve. I made a simple Excel spreadsheet, found the right font, and created sets of every number between 5100 and 5199, along with a set of reduced size "AA ####" for the car body ends. ​Because all of the other markings were accurate, I used the sharp edge of a hobby knife to very carefully scrape off the inaccurate numbers from my AA box car roster. Placing the new numbers was a breeze, just sliding them into place and blending in any overly aggressive scrape marks with some light paint touch-up and weathering.

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​Atlas joined the Ann Arbor 50' boxcar party in 2025, releasing a beautiful model of the correct paint scheme for the 5000 series boxcars, without the "CUSHION SERVICE" lettering. Only three road numbers were produced, but I snagged nine of these models and used similar techniques to re-number six of them. Luckily, now that the Ann Arbor has become more popular, Microscale has a decal set that includes accurate numbers for the 5000 series and it was very easy to expand my fleet!

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Bev-Bel/Life-Like also made a 50" Ann Arbor boxcar, although their numbering error was far more egregious than the erroneous Roundhouse batch! The Bev-Bel/Life-Like models came from the factory with two 1400 series numbers: 1407 and 1425. Unfortunately, the 1400 series was only assigned to a very small set of 40' cars numbered only between 1400 and 1409. So not only was the series number inaccurate, one of the numbers never even existed at all! So once again it was off to Craig Wilson's reference book to find out what number and/or scheme was really applicable for this type of boxcar. ​

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It turns out that the Ann Arbor leased a number of these cars from the DT&I and they were assigned the 16000 series numbers with unique paint schemes that incorporated a compass herald instead of the pennant herald that was applied by Bev-Bel/Life-Like. However, it also turned out that there was an interesting variety of schemes used by DT&I and the Ann Arbor as these cars changed hands between the two roads, and because the first rule in model railroading is that you can do what you want, and the second rule is "refer to rule #1," I decided to give the bulk of these cars some very heavy weathering and change up the heralds.​

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According to Craig's book, there were just two single-door cars in this series that had compass heralds and most of the other cars were of the double-door variety. I was faithful to the prototype roster for the two compass herald cars, but I really liked how they turned out and I also liked how the pennant heralds looked - so I made a third compass herald car and preserved three of the pennant cars, renumbering them all into the 16000 series. The picture on the right shows all of these cars in various states of weathering and renumbering.

 

Summary​

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Modifications such as these really transcend any particular road name, as the techniques and process can be applied to any model in any scale, and it's a great way to build your fleet of any particular favorite car - especially when it is a limited model run.  I am pleased to report that when Roundhouse sold its tooling and dies to Fox Valley, the new Fox Valley models are RTR and feature the correct series numbering.