I managed to get both Athearn 12-packs, the Athearn 2-packs, and 2 of the 3 Con-Cor cars in the orange scheme. I’m also working on renumbering a couple of extra Athearns I’ve grabbed along the way, as the numbers are fairly easy to remove.
True, they’re not perfect matches to the TPIX fleet (indeed, there’s nothing available now that matches the current fleet without major kitbashing), but they’re the closest thing you’re bound to find for a while, and they look great running together behind some CSX or FEC power. I say grab 'em if you can get 'em.
I hear you but my solution to bogus freight cars (yes, I had purchased many over the years) is to sell them, mostly on ebay. I’m down to the place where I have very few total fantasy cars but I do have some “stand-in’s” simply because there is no alternative yet to some cars.
As for Eel River - you know how much of a kit builder I am! Not a big fan of it. But I have built an Eel River box car from the flat part kits using MEK and the car went together surprisingly well. I have 5 or 6 kits left but I will stick to RTR of those PC&F from here on out.
BTW, the Eel River cars don’t take hours to build - they are much quicker than Intermountain or Proto 2000 kits. It does depend on whether you want to add all the brake rigging but if you build the basic car (Roof, sides, underbody and a few details, it really looks alot worse that it is. But you do need MEK to make it go easy and quick. I was shocked at how easily these kits built - they looked hard but its not really that bad at all.
Thanks for the info, i haven’t looked at this post for a month and I missed the boat on that sale, but I was looking for the whole set, not so sure if the seller “gets” the hobby…