I'm looking at the new 40' Box Cars just announced. The add copy says "New Tooling". Why, then, do Atlas products still bear exaggerated detail? I'm not talking about paint & lettering. Rather, I'm referring to Side, End, & Roof ribs; Doors; Roof Walks; etc. these still look like box cars made 20 years ago with details 2, sometimes 3 times the height or depth of their prototypes. This one one reason I prefer Micro Trains rolling stock - for the finer, more accurate detail. If you're going to reply, "Because they are cheaper", then fair enough - they definitely look cheaper. But if Atlas is gong to bother with new tooling, then why not do it right? That said, I love Atlas' line of Ol' Time Reefers they've released over the years. The exaggeration there seems appropriate considering the boldness of some of the original prototypes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Don't know if this is the case, but there are essentially two Atlases - Master and Trainman, as I recall. The first is higher end while the second is bargain. It's quite possible that the cheaper line is more along the lines of older in appearance to facilitate cheaper molds and/or assembly. Caveat all that with that's a lot of educated guesswork.
The most recent announcement appears to be August 27th, and those are "Trainman" line cars. M-T has been doing their stirrups since 1972, with great success. If they break, they can easily be repaired. I keep wondering why etched walkways and stirrups haven't become industry standard.
If you are referring to the 40' double door box car in the September announcements, the majority of the model used the existing tooling (ends, roof, roofwalk, chassis) and the sides were tooled about five years ago. When using much of the older tooling, sometimes there need to be concessions to new pieces to allow the mold to work properly, so some parts may be thicker than a completely new tool would be.
MTL tooling has it's share of accuracy issues. If we're comparing box cars, the MTL standard box car's lower door track is in the wrong spot which contributes to the body of the car being 6" too tall. And while the delrin sill steps may be finer, that doesn't make them more accurate to the prototype. Jason
For my post, I never mentioned accuracy. Only cited them as a comparison to molding size, for achieving finer detail appearance.
Paul, thank you for this explanation. It also implies you made a business decision trying to keep the car's price lower.
First Gen Atlas 40ft. steel box This is one of many old (first generation Atlas late 60's early 70's) N scale models in our collection. It is one that I enjoyed in my childhood and then passed on to my son. Recently he was going through his collection and he pulled this one and a few others from the same vintage to sell in a group on ebay or swap meet. I suggested that he try his hand at weathering on them before he list them for sale. Anyway he and I started going through the models and weathering and this is what we came up with. After going through this process we don't seem to see the heaviness of many of the details as much as before. As of now we are mixing it in our freights with all of the later Microtrains and Intermountain models. In fact when our friends come over they have commented on the cars. What they notice is the weathering not the age of the car and or its thick details. At least not until we tell them.
Personally, I would rather have the cars as they are doing them (with MT compatible couplers and great printing) than not to have them. The old Trainline molds may not be as nice as new molds, but 95%+ of the time and people do not notice anything wrong with them, especially when they are running as part of a train...and that's more than good enough for me. They are inexpensive, good running, nice looking, prototypical (printing at least) cars. I'll be buying several (SP and UP for sure).
We dont need etched stuff on the Trainman series...that raises the price. They are an affordable alternative to the gold plated higher end stuff just the way they are. Thank you Atlas ^5
To go with the point George just made, I personally like the idea of having choices of different lines of product. There are times when I may be willing to pay more for a higher level of detail and appearance, there are also times when a less expensive, less detailed product is just fine for filling up trains or yards. The best part to me is that, at this point in time, we have those choices available to make.
Ahhhhh...ok. You where talking Trainman and MT in the same post. Just wanted to make sure we werent talking 'over improving' the Trainman line.
One of the advantages of my bad vision is I don't care about detail. I just want to run long pretty trains.
And that's the great thing about this hobby. Almost infinite ways to enjoy it. I prefer to buy fewer, yet more-detailed freight cars. Less long, but more pretty.
I was just thinking about this, and even within the Atlas Trainman series, there is variation: There are the traditional Atlas 40' Plug Door and 40`PS-1 Box Cars with very exaggerated molding on the doors, oversized roofwalk and big chunky mounting holes for the roofwalk. Sometimes these are also listed as regular Atlas product, without the Trainman name. By comparison, I also have a couple of the Trainman 50' Single Door Box Cars and their detail is a fair bit finer by comparison. Maybe it's because the 50' Single Door Box Car is more recent production, but as far as a I know the 40' Plug Door and PS-1 cars is still being made as well, and look the same as they alway have. Also there was a more recently done design of the 40' PS-1 Boxcar with a couple different door styles which is also listed as Trainman, but is much different from other Trainman cars I have. The details are much less exaggerated than other Trainman cars and these ones have a pretty hefty weight to them, as well, something my other Trainman cars seem to lack entirely, because most of them are as light as a feather.
