According to Model Railroader, to be marketed under the RailSmith Models Line, Lowell Smith has purchased Walthers' tooling for the fluted and smooth-side baggage, coach, and sleeper cars. http://mrr.trains.com/sitecore/cont...mith-purchases-tooling-from-wm-k-walthers-inc
it's been a while but yes. What I found to be a plus is that they did not number the cars. Instead they included a small decal sheet with numbers(at least the ones I purchased anyway) so I could number the cars myself. I found a couple Amtrak Ph I at a train show a few years ago luckily.
That's great! Glad the tooling won't just continue to sit collecting dust somewhere. Now if only someone would purchase the rest of the N scale models Walthers is sitting on but has no interest in producing.
Yes, Walthers fell off my radar years ago. They bought Life-Like didn't they? I have a Life-Like Lehigh Valley SW-8 bought years ago that is a really fine locomotive.
???? the Walthers Passenger cars were quite nice..they weren't around long; they sold out very quickly. There were only a few subjects...baggage, coach, sleeper; the smoothside cars were well detailed-one can still fins a few on Ebay but they usually fetch a good price. A few years ago I used one to model one of the few PS Santa Fe smoothside baggage cars (the door placement wasn't accurate for an actual Santa Fe car though). I added the rivet strip supports on this one. ~Bruce
I liked the cars, but the ones I have didn't roll worth a darn......mostly due to the fact that they sold their own lighting kits and the trucks have wipers for electrical pickup. That was one of the reasons I bought the sleeper was to power a drumhead. It's not bad if you just have one car, but a whole train was like dragging a brick. Nice to see them back.....I'm sure they'll have different trucks this time.
Lowell Smith has had a long arrangement with Micro Trains to make and decorate cars for him. My favorites were the Disneyland Railroad train and the "Lionel" 6464 series. I wish I would have bought the Disneyland Railroad train when it was for sale at Disneyland using a friend's discount. I am willing to bet that MTL will be decorating the cars and supplying the trucks. That is just a hunch, I have not talked to anyone at MTL about this.
Yeah, Walthers got all of LL's inventory and tooling. They kept a few models around for a while and then poofed them off the face of the Earth, and some of them were top-shelf stuff- the Heritage steam series, for example. Would have been nice if Atlas or some other company actually interested in producing trains had bought the tooling instead. I still like Walthers' building kits, but their neglect of all the locomotives and rolling stock they could be making is hugely disappointing.
I have the Lowell Smith AFT set, which uses the Walther's cars as a starting point, ran the full train at a show, well full of what was available, so 25 cars total, and 19 are Walther's, didn't have the drag you are talking about.
When it comes to N scale Walthers has been a black hole devouring everything they could. I'm convinced that buying LifeLike was an attempt to combat Horizon's purchase of Athearn. The LifeLike line of locomotives was to offset the loss of access to Athearn products. In the process N scale was sacrificed. Walthers did improve the LifeLike Y3b with traction tires but in typical Walthers' fashion refused to make the upgrade available to those people who had previously purchased the LifeLike units. I doubt if the situation will change. I think Walthers' will go down with the ship that is the typical brick and mortar LHS.
Called Walthers once a few years ago to ask if they had plans to re-run the 0-8-0 or any other LL stuff in N. Basically, NO. Sad, tossing business away.
It should come to no surprise. They're offerings are not that great in n-scale. I haven't gotten anything from them ever. It's like they want to bury n-scale when they get the dies and tooling. I bet they charged handsomely for the tooling too. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
ok...isn't this thread about Lowell Smith owning the molds for the fluted and smoothside passenger cars now...?
Not when the chance to interject about Walthers is ripe for the picking, lol I've always been very impressed by Lowell Smith, but it's way too rich for my blood.
