The JnJ wagontop caboose is probably one of the finest products the new owner has produced (at least I think it came from the new owner- I don't remember Jon Cloyd making it). They sell out and they are hard to find. I was wandering around a Internet store just after Thanksgiving and saw they had 9 kits. I bought two-- one for me and one for my son- Chessiefan. WhooHoo, he was happy for Christmas. Not only is the kit a great casting (for a casting), but the fine etched pieces are great. The directions are not that great, but the N-Scale Mag article from a while back fills in the gap. One thing I was wondering-- these kits are fairly hard to come by. However, there's a guy on eBay selling wagontop cabooses. Some undec sometimes and some custom painted. Clearly they are JnJ cabooses. However, there is no etched details with it. He is not advertising these as JnJ cabooses. Did he just make a mold and copy JnJ's wonderful work?-- leaving off the etched portion? Anybody bought from this guy? Like item number: 140494646276
A while back someone else raised a similar question. I don't recall an answer. Might be able to find it in message archives via search? Boxcab E50
I think Skipgear posted something a month or so ago about a wagontop he found listed on sales site that can remain nameless. I'm not so sure myself that this guy's wagontops are based on the JNJ casting. They don't look right to me. Maybe some guy did something on his own hook, maybe even without knowing about the JNJ model.
I told Troy about them the day I found them. He contacted the seller and never got a reply so I can only guess that they are not on the up and up. They are poor copies of the JNJ shell with old Atlas frames and handrails with the ladders on the wrong side and no roofwalks. I unfortunately might have sold the guy his decals to make those things possible. If you look close, he didn't even clean the flashing from the bodies. I feel sorry for anybody that paid money for one of those things on E-bay. Half the value of the JNJ kit is the photo etch set. I wish I could get just the etch set seprately for the steps alone. BTW - Our shop keeps them in stock. :tb-biggrin:
Skipgear which shop is that ? Dumb question on these cabooses,were they used during the steam era? Like to get one if so. Rick
They were definitely steam era. The cabooses came about because the wood frame cabooses could not handle pusher service over the mountains. With the steel frame wagontop, you didn't need to cut off the caboose to add a helper. Send me a PM about the caboose kits.
