Can anyone identify the USA Trains item number for this car? http://tinyurl.com/2bqtjzr It seems to be an R17603 at first glance, the only PRR pipeload car I see, but then the colour of the car doesn't match the picture on the USA Trains website and neither does the car running number. The car number in the pcture I posted is 20458 in case one can't read it.
There is a huge problem with flat cars in the USA Trains world right now. Let me explain. USA Trains came up with what they thought was a good idea, but now the scam artist are having a field day with USA Trains flat cars. USA Trains decided to make flat cars in bulk and they were sold without boxes and packed in brown bulk boxes which there was about 50 per box. They thought it would be a good idea for people like us in the hobby to buy and make things with it. The problem is that scam artist are buying them, then going to walmart and buying a cheap toy and then put a load on it, then they buy a blue box from USA Trains and pack it up, then sell it as a USA Trains factory item when in dead it is not. This was not the end of the problems. Now people are buying bulk ends from USA Trains and making thier own bulk head flat cars and pipe load cars. So without saying, now it's hard to distiguish real factory made flat cars from those that were made by someone who is just trying to make a buck on something they made. I did catch one person trying to pass off a Rio Grande bulk flat car as a factory Bulk Head flat car, the bulk heads were a different shade of orange than the flat car. Early USA Trains that were made with orange plastic was a lighter shade than the orange plastic they use now. So the bulk heads which were older was a lighter orange than the flat bed car itself which was a darker orange. For me this was a easy fake to spot, not a factory flatbed for sure. Other colors such as brown is harder to tell, but if the numbers don't match to what is on USA Trains website, I suggest you don't buy it. Here are the following road names that were made in bulk that could be used by scam artist to sell as factory items. Santa Fe, Union Pacific, Pennsylvania, Rio Grande, TTX, I'll keep you posted as I find more. Remember this is not really USA Trains fault that people are trying to pass these off as factory flat cars. The original intent was for the hobbyist to use them as they please and make what they want out of them. Now there is just havoc tryig to seperate factory flat cars from fake ones. However, just like everything else there is a exception to every rule. To make things even more confusing, Charles Ro himself did put together a very limited amount of flat cars that were shipped in bulk and then put loads on them. He did document this at the shows and I did buy one only because he documented it personally, he told me personally he made it and he was there to say yea he did it. Other than that I would have left it there if he was not there to back up the sign. He used helicopters, trucks, trailers, helicopters, etc. It's just tough right now to tell if a flat car is a factory one or a fake that someone wants to make a fast buck on. Looking at the picture you posted, more than likely this is a bulk flat bed car that someone bought the bulk ends for and put there own pipe load on it. You can also buy the seperators rof the pipe from USA Trains. The biggest thing that leads me to believe this is not a factory bulk head flat car is the fact that USA Trains never used gray pvc piping, they always used white pvc piping for pipe load cars.
Thanks for the detailed explanation Trainman - very interesting! I know there are a lot of "fake" LGB cars being sold on ebay - we actually created a special category for those in the Large Scale database to list whatever we have found. They are usually described on ebay as very limited production, uncatalogued, etc. and they tend to fetch high prices from those who fall for this fraud, but I never knew that there were sort of "fake" USA Trains cars as well. That the pipeload is different than what USA Trains provided is pretty obvious (although I must say, the grey pipes with the writing on them looks more realistic than the white ones), what I still haven't figured out which flat car would have been used as the base car to add the ends and the pipeload to. I looked at all the flat car types on the USAT website and there was none that looked as if it had the 20458 running number. The pictures on the USAT website are rather small so it's hard to tell. This car btw, is not one I want to buy. I'm getting pictures from dealers in North America and Europe for the database and have asked them to focus a bit more on USA Trains items rather than LGB since we don't have that many USAT items in the database right now (whereas we have tons of LGB). I think I'll put this car aside for now unless someone can identify a base PRR flat car with that running number.
Please let me explain one other thing and then I'll make another quote on this. When I say that USA Trains made bulk flat cars, I don't mean they made bulk head type flat cars, I mean that they made flat bed cars in mass quantites with no packaging. I'm only explaining this so we are on the same page and it's important for my next quote. These mass produced flat bed cars are not on the USA Trains website and they were never advertised on USA Trains website. Instead these flat type cars are sold at train shows out of these big brown boxes in which there is about 50 to a brown box. I have a few theories of why they are not on the website. Theory #1 is because how would you order one? The stock number is only for the bulk box of 50 flat bed cars. Theory #2 I think they were also offered to authorized USA Trains dealers by the bulk box. Theaory #3 since how there is no stock number, they prodcued them and did not catalog them since they were not individually boxed. I was even shocked to see they made a Rio Grande flat car also packaged in a box of 50 as bulk quantity and in was in the color yellow. Yellow???? I ask myself why a Rio Grande flat in yellow??? Thoery #4 how would you catalog all the different variations of numbers and colors of each mass produced flat car made. There were just too many road numbers, many colors for each raod name and even colors a road name would not have used. It would just take up too much web space. You will be surprised what USA Trains has at the shows that are not on it's website. Aristocraft also has alot of uncataloged trains not on the website. I myself have seen these mass produced flat cars which were not packaged individually at the train shows for the last 2 years.
I understand what you're posting - puts me in a quandry how to categorize this type of car on the GBDB. If there is a slight and simple (and reversible) modification to an item, say metal wheels were added or passengers were added or a coupling was changed, then I place the item in the main section with a comment in the description how the item shown differs from the factory version. If the item was modified to a larger extent (usually not reversible) it goes into the kit-bash section. Here with these USA Trains cars, the starting point is a flat car from USA Trains that's probably used as bought - ie no paint or graphic changes - but then the end bulk heads are added and so is the load. The flat car itself is original USAT but with no product ID, the bulk heads are USAT as well but the pipe load is not. Hmmmm LGB has sold a lot of uncatalogued items over the years, but each item, catalogued or not, had an LGB part number. Somer of these were only used within the factory and were not in the item itself - engines and cars that were ever only sold as a set for instance - but if you knew someone at LGB you could get the item numbers for these individual pieces. Don't know if the same applied to USA Trains products, but even if it did, trying to get an internal USAT product number is probably impossible.
The problem lies where USA Trains never put stock numbers on these flat cars since they were sold as bulk to dealers. But I'm sure there is some type of stock number on the bulk box itself that it was packed in. Well, only one thing to do in this matter, I'll contact Charles Ro Jr himself and see what he says.
ok, I sent Charles Ro Jr of USA Trains a e-mail, so lets see if he has time out of his busy schedule to clear up the confusion.
