Accurail now offers ready to run kits. I just received one from them, a USRA 2 bay hopper lettered C&O. It has metal wheels, but I have not tested it or anything.
Gene
I have a B&O hopper. It's comparable to a Bachmann car, in both performance and detail.
Quote from: SteamGene on June 04, 2007, 02:01:09 PM
Accurail now offers ready to run kits. ...
Gene,
Some have been out since last qtr of 2006. The few I have seen being sold under
Accuready ™ brand were fully assembled. As I recall, they have brass axles and don’t roll as freely as Bachmann Silver Series rolling stock.
Kit ???
Being fully assembled, perhaps we can refer to them as Ready-to-Disassemble kits. ;)
Hunt,
I haven't done anything but look at it through the clear pastic box. They sent me the one assembled 50T two bay hopper, three AAR steel box cars, and a covered hopper with a 1968 build date.
I will check the free rolling of the 2 bay hopper.
Gene
Some cars are paint schemes not in the regular line. I think the 2 bays are the same however. I have not had any problems with them rolling. The detail in general is better than Bachmann. Much of the Bachmann tooling is 20 years old or so.
Hunt,
the two bay rolled freer than a Walthers heavy weight passenger car. The metal wheels, OTOH, need painting. Bright sivler.
Gene
QuoteBeing fully assembled, perhaps we can referred to them as Ready-to-Disassemble kits.
Hunt,
Your comment is a wonderful oxymoron! Do you think that there might be any nicely finished resin kits out there that are 'ready-to-disassemble' :D I'd probably buy a few ;D
lanny nicolet
Ah yes; another kit manufacturer bites the dust. I was wondering why I couldn't find any Accurail KITS in any of my local hobby shops: they're all being shipped to China to be assembled.
Strange that two years Accurail was running ads extolling the virtues of actually building a kit yourself. Now that marketing line has gone mute and they've jumped on the higher profits bandwagon.
And I love their new and improved pricing scheme for these cars:
KIT RTR
2 bay hopper: $10.98 $15.98
40' boxcar: $11.98 $16.98
40' reefer: $12.98 $19.98
Of the three the twin hoppers are actually the hardest to assemble, and the 40' boxes actually have the most parts! So why are the reefers the most expensive? Simple: they've got the flashy paint schemes that everyone wants, so Accurail can gouge their customers a little for them and get away with it!
Sorry; I guess I'm a bit grumpy this morning. But Accurail was the last holdout on this RTR craze, and you could almost guarantee that you could get the cars you needed from them. Now, looking at their website, it seems that everything is out of stock, and likely on a container heading East...just like everything else these days.
Quote from: lanny on June 07, 2007, 02:05:47 AM
QuoteBeing fully assembled, perhaps we can refer to them as Ready-to-Disassemble kits.
Hunt,
Your comment is a wonderful oxymoron! Do you think that there might be any nicely finished resin kits out there that are 'ready-to-disassemble' :D I'd probably buy a few ;D
lanny nicolet
Lanny,
Actually the oxymoron is
Ready-to-Run Kit. However, R-T-R kits do exist. How many times have you bought a R-T-R and when you opened the box you find all those not so easy to put on detail parts are included for you to do just that – put them on?
Any fully assembled (or mostly assembled) R-T-R can be considered as a Ready-to-Disassemble Kit. Depending on one’s modeling skills of course. Often the Ready-to-Disassemble Kit is the primary component of any kit bashing project. ;)
According to one of the guys who works for Accurail they've entered the ready to roll market because of necessity.
Actually, let's face it. Way back when a kit consisted of a block of wood, some metal pieces, and an instruction sheet. I bet those guys complained when Athearn came out with plastic kits.
Gene
With my eyes and hands any more the last kits I tried to build almost turned into a disaster and even trying to add the grabirons and small pieces to Atlas Pulpwood cars is a pain for me any more.
(http://www.imrcmodels.com/distrib/ccs/images/ccs1031.jpg)
Good example RTR except the bloody grabs on the ends and coupla major pain in the Caboose.
Stephen
I started in HO with a little Mantua 0-4-0 tank engine, a Revell caboose and an Athearn SP 50 foot double door box car. The Athearn box car was a kit and the list price was $1.59. The trucks came disasembled and didn't have springs. Instead it had little rubber inserts (which I replaced with springs). The car went together quickly and I remember hating the X2F couplers that came on the car. However, these looked better than the Mantua loop couplers that had been on my little tank engine. I later found out about Kadee couplers when I bought a Main Line wooden box car kit to assemble.
I am told that assembling all the parts for a kit in a box, and printing instructions, is just as expensive as having the cars assembled. Maybe that's why Accurail switched.
I found a huge selection of Accurail kits at http://www.discounttrainsonline.com.
If Accurail isn't making them anymore, I would suggest grabbing them while they are still available.
I am not looking forward to kit building, I "bash" all kits of anything. But I am not finding RTR that I need, so may give it a try. The only thing I didn't like about the one Accuready I got was the ugly wheels, but with the savings on the kit, the wheels could be cheaply replaced.
Some advice needed. I am in need of a few 40 foot boxcars, certain type and era, around 1900 -1930 , I guess wood. Seems there are "vintage" and "modern" but nothing in between. Has anyone tried cutting down a 50 ft car? I'm considering using my 12 inch radial arm saw on the one car I have lol.
Bo
Quote from: Bojangle
Some advice needed. I am in need of a few 40 foot boxcars, certain type and era, around 1900 -1930 , I guess wood. Seems there are "vintage" and "modern" but nothing in between.
Hi Bo,
You may want to think about narrowing your focus a bit, because you're running into three distinct phases of box car development.
1910s: the height of the 36 foot, double sheathed, steel underframe car.
1920s: 40' DS cars dominate, but not by much, as 40' single sheathed cars are quickly becoming more popular, and 40' steel cars are making major inroads. Older cars are having steel ends and center sills added, replacing wood ends and trussrods.
1930s: due to the Depression, 36 foot cars are slaughtered wholesale. Almost all new cars (the few that are built) are 40' steel, except on odd holdout roads like the GN, which is still building double sheathed and plywood sheathed cars (which are otherwise "modern")
So depending on which decade you pick you're going to have a very different looking roster. You can't run all 36 foot cars and accurately call it 1936, no more than you can run PS-0's in 1912.
As for where to find appropriate boxcars for that broad period of time, they're all over. All of the Accurail wood boxcars are good, as well as most of the steel boxes offered by Bowser, Branchline, Tichy and Intermountain. If you're looking for variety and aren't afraid of a little building, Westerfield and F&C both make hindreds of correct resin kits for common cars that will likely never be produced in plastic (most of Sunshine's resin kits are good for the post-WWII period).
With a little work you can turn a run of the mill 1890s period MDC 36 foot car into a more modern car:
(http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/558/01_36_C_O_box_side.jpg)
QuoteHas anyone tried cutting down a 50 ft car?
Sure have. MDC used to make a great 50 foot single sheathed boxcar. When cut down to 40 foot or so (by removing the two end panels) they become an almost dead-on accurate model of Wabash 40' double door, single sheathed auto cars. The Wabash, being a Detroit & Toledo road, had thousands of these cars, which lasted into the 1960s. Other roads copied their general design, making the car more common that usually thought.
The conversion isn't quite simple, as it requires turning the model into a flat kit by removing the roof and ends, shortening the sides, roof and underframe, and then gluing everything back together, but the overall process isn't hard. I've got five of them half finished, waithin for the day that I can get back to that particular project!
Hi Ray
Please checkthe following link
http://www.railserve.com/hebervalley/
Scroll down near the bottom left side, picture is 088_img_5901. That might be a 50 footer, I can't tell if it is "wood" or what. Can you help on this. I found a NP Accurail similar to this one, which is sorta out of sync with UP, but I am just trying to match up the freight roster in the pictures. I would also like to weather as per pic.
I have a couple Sinclair tankers, and the correct Caboose is made by Atlas.
Heber Utah is only 150 miles west of me, I plan to go there later this summer and take some detail photos.
I just completed my modern UP Axial Basin Coal roster, now I'm working on the Heber UP 618 (Bachmann)
Bo
Quote from: Bojangle
Scroll down near the bottom left side, picture is 088_img_5901. That might be a 50 footer, I can't tell if it is "wood" or what. Can you help on this. I found a NP Accurail similar to this one, which is sorta out of sync with UP, but I am just trying to match up the freight roster in the pictures.
Hi Bo,
First off, thanks for that great link! I've always wanted to head out west to chase steam, and the HV is near the top of my list! (right after the Nevada Northern!)
(http://www.railserve.com/hebervalley/images/088_IMG_5901.jpg)
That's a 40-foot car. It looks longer because it's a low-sided car. We're used to seeing boxcars with 10 foot tall sides, and this one has sides that are 8'6".
F&C makes a kit for a very similar NP car. If you don't want to build a resin kit, you could come close by taking an Accurail USRA double sheathed boxcar and replacing the steel fishbelly center sills with trussrods.
Stephen,
That's a very nice caboose. Who is the mfg.?
If you have the grabirons and othe details that need to be added, Stephen, pack em' up and send it to me (I don't have any IC orange paint, but I think I could get some floquill or scalecoat in a jar for touch up purposes. I'll be glad to do the final detailing for you if you wish. Contact me off line if you are interested (editortcs@aol.com).
lanny nicolet
Hi Lanny,
They are made by Centralia Car shops, very limited run assembled by Intermountain. Only thing I dont like about them is they use Accumate couplers.
I think you will like the red ones better as they are Steam era and Green Diamond era paint schemes. Ron at Deplaines Hobbies has them all in stock Orange ones are $31.00 the Reds are $25.00 but come with plastic wheels which I got to find some more 33" simi scale wheel sets for.
(http://www.imrcmodels.com/distrib/ccs/images/ccs1023.jpg)
You up to doing 4 for me and adding scaleKadee couplers to them?
I'll drop you a Email.
Stephen
PS: I am finally getting my order of IC and GM&O hoppers from Discount Trains after 5 months of waiting and calling them to cancel the order ::) all Accurail kits except for the 4 piggyback flatsand a Con Cor Greenville open hopper.
Ray
I started another thread on the HVRR, the main photo gallery link is a little hard to find. It's under the "media" dropdown.
http://www.hebervalleyrr.org/photo_gallery1/HVRR_photogallery1.htm
Be forewarned,the pics are huge.
I may have to reconsider my first opinion of Accurail. The first (and only )one I have literally fell apart, and the wheels were bad. There seems to be a "love/hate" thing about the line. Maybe I just got a bad one, as have seen good reviews here: they have a great selection.
I prefer RTR, as I'm not comfortable with kits with my eyes. Having a hard time finding the 40 footers I want. I'll have to keep looking. Maybe someday I will be able to tell one car from another, model RR is all new to me.
Bo
Stephen,
Sure, I'm up to do four! If you ship the four to me with all the parts and couplers, I'll be glad to add hand rails and couplers and ship them back. I 'owe' you for those absolutely gorgeous photos of IC #2547 (2542?) at McComb which will be the reference I use in my Spec Mtn kit bash.
I'll send you an email off line.
lanny nicolet