I have a couple of Accurail boxcars that I built from kits from early in my hobby that while nothing special are still pretty decent pieces. However as I learned more about railroad history they kind of fell out of favor since their roof walks dated them before my era. Incidentally they are from a phase I went through where I was collecting a boxcar for each railroad that was taken over by the UP. This is as far as I got.
As I was digging through my parts/project box the other day I found them and decided to take a stab at updating them to a more modern era by removing their roofwalks. I figure worse case scenario I start with broken cars and end up with unusable salvage attempts. Best case scenario I get some more operable boxcars. As you can see from the picture they are already in a bit of a sorry state, wheels, couplers, and sometimes trucks were given homes on other more modern pieces.
It appears the MKT box is going to be a little bit more work because of the larger holes and molding around them. As the CNW is a little more local and I have friends that model it I’m starting with that one.
After I the holes plugged the next step is going to be broken stirrup steps (get it, next step is steps 🙂 ) as two of them are missing one or more.
Matt's Railroad Blog 
Matt are you going to do some weathering on this?
Yes, as I finish them my plan is to weather them. The next step for the CNW boxcar is to replace broken stirrup steps and repaint the ends black as the prototype did.
Cool!!