The Bachmann ACF 50 ft ‘Railbox’ type boxcars with sliding doors are very nice. It’s great they don’t have big out of scale door tracks. I have several of them, and add boxes, figures etc. so I can open the car doors when the car is spotted for loading.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/m/mrr-layouts/2289595.aspx (not sure why link isn’t active?)
http://shop.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=258_324_327_611
Stix:
Nice job on the boxcar!
Unfortunately the Railbox type cars are too modern for my era.
Dave
Ive got 20 N&W hoppers and 12 (so far) flatcars. It would be too expensive for me to have a long unit train if I spent $25-$35 per car. These fit the bill.
Santa Fe all the way!:
Have you had to make any adjustments to the cars (i.e. coupler height)?
How do they behave when you are running them?
Thanks
Dave
As it should be since its a copy of Athearns BB/RTR “Railbox” boxcar.
Really?? I have one of the Athearn cars, they aren’t that similar. It doesn’t have the same door opening aparatus inside it as the Bachmann one.
I said a copy not a exact duplicate.[(-D]
The Bachmann car has the same funky roof,genric ends,a foot to wide and other BB “Railbox” similarities.
Yes, really. Bachmann based their car off the same incorrect plans as Athearn, or else just copied the basic model from Athearn’s. There are a few construction differences, primarily replacing Athearn’s door claws with something less obtrusive, but the dimensional and detail errors from the Athearn car were reproduced - even Athearn’s clunky door tracks were copied. The prototype has a diagonal panel roof, but instead of modeling the prototype correctly, Bachmann just copied the X-panel roof like Athearn used. Previously, the only model of the ACF “Railbox” style car was Athearn’s. Bachmann had an opportunity to rectify the errors and build a better car, but decided not to. Compare the two to a prototype photo and the Bachmann car will resemble Athearn’s more closely than the real car.
Bachmann’s made-up paint jobs don’t help. I don’t think any of them are really correct. The only one I’m aware of that’s on this type of car is Railbox, and even there they didn’t bother to match anything up too well.
Here’s Bachmann’s Railbox scheme.
Bachmann’s door lettering doesn’t look like anything Railbox used, dimensional data is incorrectly arranged on the wrong panels, consolidated stencils are the wrong size, the “next load any road”
Don’t apologise for “bumping an old thread”. You’ll get the guys who complain that it’s an old thread (as if that invalidates it), or if you start a new one, you’ll get the guys who complain that you’ve created a redundancy. In other words, you can’t win, so, do it either way, and be happy that you’ve been nice enough to contribute. It’s 2016 in my part of the world, and just came upon this thread in researching Bachmann Silver Series.
Just a thought here:
You could just add the thread to favorites, then you don’t need to bump an old thread to make a statement about bumping old threads…so that you can read it later.
Here’s a Silver Series Bachmann boxcar coupled to two Athearn RTR boxcars.
I have a Silver Series tank car, #17840, which is a single dome car letterd for Phillips Petroleum )PSPX 9214). I added weigt by drilling a hole in the center of the underside and pouring in lead shot, followed by CA glue (Which didn’t hold), then gluing a plug in the hole. It has nice, crisp lettering, but nowhere does it indicate the ARA or ICC class, which I thought was on all tank cars until DOT classes took over. Neither is the capacity in gallons shown. I’ve calculated the capacity at about 12,800 gallons. Capacity is shown as 30 tons, which seems low for a car of this size and apparent vintage.
In general, I don’t buy Bachmann anymore, mostly because of the poor quality I’ve experienced with their steam locos.
Ok, I have to ask, which steam locos did you have issues with?
Because I have over 30 Bachmann and Bachmann Spectrum steam locos and had fewer problems than what I have had with 7 Broadway steam locos.
And if I may ask, what sort of problems did you have?
The things so many people don’t get about Bachmann are that:
They make models of different levels of detail and features for different markets, train sets, intermediate level, and more advanced level modeling. Not every product will suite every modeler.
Bachmann was one of the pioneers in the high detail RTR stuff we have today, but there was a learning curve. Their quality has constantly evolved over the last 30 years. Not every product in that 30 years was perfect, and a few were duds. That does not mean all their products are duds…
Some models in the regular line look about the same as 25-30 years ago, but have been retooled mechanically, don’t judge the current versions on those old versions.
Sheldon