Athearn seem to make about the largest range of cars and are available at a good price, but someone said to me that by the time you put metal wheels and Kadees on them, you may as well buy one of the 'better' makes. Any comments/suggestions? (Preferably about subject above ) (If it makes any difference I'm mainly interested in hoppers, flats, gons and tanks.)
Mike, you owe it to yourself to at least look at the Atlas ACF Pressureaide Covered Hopper(MR-OCT-2001) Pricey @ $27.00 MSP, but shop for the Discount, somewhere around $9.00 off. These are the best looking cars I have & with great free rolling ability. They come with Accumate magnetic couplers. The new Atlas tankers have the same Qualities. Less expensive is the Walters covered hopper which I do not own, but written up in MR-Aug-2001
To an extent they are right, over here in the UK an average athearn car is £6, Kadee couplers (I don't get on with the plastic knuckle couplers that come with current Athearn) is another £1* and Intermountain or Kadee metal wheels around £2* so that Athearn car will have cost, say £9. An average Atlas one might be £12 (the current covered hoppers that were mentioned are more) so not that much more expensive. True I would probably swap the couplers out on these too but.... (*per car) Dependant on your era you may have to go to a particular manufacturer as well, if you're buying 40' boxcars then plenty of folk do them, if you're talking enclosed autoracks, there's pretty much one game in town and issues of who's kit is better become rather irrelavant. Athearn does have a few gems in it's fleet though, the PS ribside covered hopper is fairly good, and some of the more "modern" boxcars (40' hicubes, 50' railbox style and 86') are pretty good for the age of the moulding as well. (The 86' needs some TLC to run reliably though) If you're into that kind of era then check out the roundhouse/MDC range also, they are a similar quality for the most part as Athearn. HTH
I've actually been impressed with the LifeLike Proto 1000 cars of late. The earlier cars were rehashes of train-set quality shells, with a new underframe, good trucks/wheels, and a good paint job. They were a good bargain at $12 CDN per car. They're still good, though the last run were really a Proto 2000 car in my estimation - and priced accordingly ($25 CDN). For "regular service" cars - when you're looking for reliable operation, decent detail, and an affordable price - I find Athearn, MDC, and Accurail are still hard to beat. I think they give the best combination of the desirable traits above. Besides, I don't feel so bad when I'm cutting up a $5 used Athearn car as I do a new $25 Life Like B-Dubya
IMO the best freight cars are the new kits made by P2K, Red Caboose , Intermountain, and so on . All are very well detailed, and come with metal wheels, and Kadee type couplers. Most of them are also under 15.00 bucks. After you build a couple of them they go together fairly quickly and look great.........Mike
I have recently tried the Accrail. Some cars are very well done while others seem good in detail but fall short on the scale size. Not a bad price if you watch for the discounts. [ 18 November 2001: Message edited by: Ben_Hammer ]</p>
I agree with nost of the other posts, Although, i you have the old Bachmann, Tyco, Model Power cars, and a Dremal, little styrene, and a few coupler boxes, you can make these cars just as if not better then Athearn, or MDC cars.All it takes is a little Cutting here and a little file there, add Athearn Trucks "I use Wathers Sprung trucks" add Coupler boxes and Kadee's, Some weathering, Make a great car, Ihave two the run without troubles on the head of 30+ cars and work great.
Some of my fave kits are the ones made by Intermountain, Red Caboose, Proto 2000, and Eel River Models. They go together great and are nicely detailed (the Red Caboose beet rack is a must for an Espee nut like myself ). Some of the Walthers kits are ok, but tend to look a little clunky compared to some of the newer stuff out there. Accurail and Athearn are also good kits, and are a great value. As far as RTR cars are concerned, IMHO the new Athearn Genesis 60' boxcars are the best out there. Separate grabs and ladders, freestanding brake details, etched coupler platforms, 100T trucks with semiscale wheels w/rotating bearing caps, even separate tack boards...I was impressed the first time I saw them. The Trinity 5161 hopper they plan to release next year looks great, too; the sample I fondled at the recent WPM meet in La Habra looked awesome. The newer RTR stuff from Walthers is pretty good; the new Thrall tri-level autoracks and revised tank cars are all well done. [ 20 November 2001: Message edited by: Mankind ]</p>
I'll add my 2 cents worth for the RTR stuff... I seen and bought a few of the Revel RTR cars and they are finely detailed to the 9's! And runs really good right out of the box! But at $12 to $17 a car... Just alittle pricy I know... But I got a pretty good deal on mine tho... I made a deal with the hobby shop owner and all and took the whole shelf being he was wanting to liquidate the store to move to another locoation and didn't want to take it all... But each car was individually priced from $12 to $17 each. I got it all for $250. Big price but I got 150 cars so... I jumped at it for the details sake and bought 'em on the spot and took 'em home. I took a chance and all and if it was a worthless buy I would have sold them by dividing the total amount by the price I payed for them all, put a price tag on them and stuck on a shelf if it turned out to be a bad buy. But they all run great tho! Which makes me happy. And really good for the steam era that I run so. Nothing of the new age (present) so.... I'm happy.
