I purchased IM's attempt of about 4 years ago. I returned them because the daylight colors were so far off. I verified with my vendor that the current cars have the correct colors before I purchased. He did, and I went ahead and bought them. The colors are indeed correct and the cars are very well detailed. So why the disappointment? Well, one of the special features of these cars along with all others that were made specially for the Shasta Daylight was that they had extra large windows. These cars indeed DO have the large windows but what they reveal most is the totally empty interior. In an age when its becoming the norm to put lighting in and detail the interiors with at least a few passengers. I suppose I'll now have to think what a good thing it was that they put window shades in (but no tables or seats) because the window shades cover about half the windows and help hide the emptiness! I don't want to break anything, and I'm not sure the roof comes off. Can anyone tell me how these come apart? I almost think they're glued together. If possible, I'll try to add tables and chairs myself. All ideas welcome!
I don't know if you have the new cars with lighting. But here is the instruction for shell removal http://www.imrcmodels.com/BatteryReplaceNPaxCar.htm. Also I would contact IM for help if you don't get an answer here. No sense damaging a new car. BTW I looked at your layout. What a fantastic job you did.
Good job on that link Gary. They don't call you the "LinkMaster" for nothing. Yep...just took the tour of your layout Rick... ummm...I'm speechless.
No, these cars are not lighted from the factory, so those instructions won't apply. Thanks for the effort though. Thanks for the layout comment. Unfortunately it isn't past tense. Long way to go yet!
Interiors is one area that is sorely lacking in N-scale though it might be possible to bash decent interiors from the interiors of RTR cars, if the company offers that part (hint, hint... Kato). There has been some sitings of car interior parts but I do not know exactly where some folks are getting them. Maybe someone can provide us with some better ideas in this regard through this thread.
I don't know yet. I've only had one of the 3 out of the box. I'll try to let you know tomorrow. My first unverified thought is that they're too light, but then, I think thats true of just about all N scale rolling stock, so we'll see.
Mine runs very well. I have not even noticed the lack of an interior, though. They will not be simple to build as these are not coaches - they need one diner and one coffee shop. I think that a custom interior for a car which almost certainly has a small run would have been quite an expensive add-on. I'm far from disappointed with the one I got hold of - I'm thrilled. I just wish they'd hurry up and bring out the rest of the Shasta cars that are on the future products list (not to mention a certain articulated steam locomotive! :^) Phil
I was disappointed as well. I had been under the impression that these were being re-tooled along with the rest of the IM/Centralia passenger cars. Now I wonder if the rest of the Shasta Cars are going to also be interior-less. A couple of months ago I had responded to a similar thread to compare the IM/CCS Shasta triple diner to the Kato triple diner. The IM/CCS triple diner looks good and runs fine AFAIK. I did have one derail going backwards though. I'm not sure if the IM/CCS triple diner is 'riding' high or if the Kato triple diner is 'riding' low... or if its just an optical illusion... but the ride height appears to be different between the two. IM/CCS on left - Kato on right:
Kitbash an Interior Anyone find out how to get the roof off or access to the interior? Creating an interior would be a good modeling project.
I understand the older ones didn't have lighting, or even interior. The price they command for them, I would have been very disapointed to. But, I just before Christmas picked up a couple of the Golden State cars from them, and they are the newer tooling, and even tho they are pricey, I was very pleased with them. Not only do they have interior now, and really nice detailing with diaphrams, their lighting is really cool how they did it. They are battery powered which is nice for no flickering, or robbing power from the track. They have magnetic reed switches to turn them on and off. IM even gives you a little "magic wand" to wave over them to turn the switch on and off. I am really impressed with the newer releases.
I don't know what you mean by the term "older ones". These have the most recent Centralia Car Shops product number and can't have been released very long ago.
Man, those look like different scales, and the large windows contribute to this. It's almost like the IM is much closer than the Kato.
Maybe a poor choice of words. What I meant was their "1st release", which is an older release than the 2nd release. I was understanding that the 1st release Centralia Shops cars had no interior or lighting, but the 2nd release they included it due to the outcry of disappointment.
