Greetings All, I’ve dabble a bit in HO but have mostly been an N-scaler for the past 45 years. As I get older (61) I find myself drawn more and more into HO since it’s easier to see details but one thing I’ve noticed is that the price of rolling stock is getting pretty insane for a lot of the higher detailed models so I’ve been wondering if there are any decent kit manufacturers out there. My desire is to put a lot of detail into the model so even if the kit is rather basic I’d like that part of it to be a good platform for more detailing. I like rolling stock from the 60’s through present day. Who do you think makes good quality rolling stock kits?
ScaleTrains has kits for some of their modern rolling stock under their Kit Classic line (https://www.scaletrains.com/ho-scale.html). Rapido Trains also has kits - though their HO is sold out (https://rapidotrains.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=kit). Tangent has produced kits (https://www.tangentscalemodels.com/undecorated-kits/) and all of Moloco's HO offerings are in kit form (https://www.molocotrains.com/collections/freight-cars/omaha). I'm sure there are others.
Accurail has a nice range of kits covering most of the 20th century. Almost everyone can find something to like there. I would encourage everyone to search Weekend Photo Fun for the excellent results Trainboard member rjthomas909 has achieved detailing and painting the earlier era Accurail kits
Athearn Blue Box and Accurail are probably the two biggest HO kit brands. Athearn no longer makes kits, but plenty are on eBay. Intermountain, Atlas Trainman, and Scaletrains offer kits as well. There are plenty of discontinued or defunct brands on eBay like Proto 2000 and Branchline. Both of those are a bit higher detail. There are some craftsman kits out there like Labelle, Westerfield, and Ambroid too. They aren't that expensive, but to modernize them, the costs rise quickly and trucks and couplers generally aren't included.
