I would like to know what % of your freight cars are craftsman vs 5min. out of box? 98% of mine are of the 5min. type modified with kadee wheels and couplers. The other 2% are craftsman kits, which I like most ,but are very hard to assemble with my old eyes and shakey hands.Thank you for looking and for your comments.Tomas in Durango.
When I first got going I wanted to get a roster up quickly. Many of my early purchases were Athearn, Roundhouse and Accurail kits. I still like to get this level of kit as they are great for my kids to work on. My preference now is for a more challenging kit such as a Proto 2K, Branch-line Blueprint or Red Caboose kit. I would not call these craftsman, but they are certainly not 5 min kits either. I have never made what I would consider to be a craftsman kit for a freight car. I do have a hankering to have a go at an AMB Laser kit caboose one day. One thing I can say is that 99% of my freight car roster are kits. I am really disappointed that R-to-R is getting such a large slice of the market and that kits are slowly diminishing in popularity.
Most of mine are the 5 minute type, but very upgraded(roof walks, grab irons, etc…). I still have some ‘craftsman’ kits, but they are the Westerfield/Sunshine variaty. The old wood kits do not look good even if well built anymore. I still do a lot of painting/lettering, but the trend has been to modify/weather existing kits in the past 5-6 years.
I like to work with Accurail, and P2K kits as starting material. My last purchases have been 2 Atlas RTR offset coal hoppers - For $9 each they have correct lettering, and just some weathering and adding cut levers/air hoses - they will be railroad ready!
Jim
For me, 5 min. freight cars = RTR freight cars.
I have Accurail, Athearn, Branchline, MDC, Proto 2000, Tichy, and Walthers. Even with the easier kits (e.g. Accurail & Athearn), I still spend upwards of a 1/2 hour putting them together.
Tom
I started out with the Athearn Blue Box kits and probably built around 20 of them. Then I discovered Athearn Genesis, Atlas and Proto 2000 RTR cars, I bought over 200 of them because I just loved the detail. About a year ago I rediscovered kits again. Now I build Athearn Genesis undecorated cars, I get the detail I want but I got to build them and paint them myself. These kits are not for beginners and do require a little bit of skill to turn out a nice car.
id say 95% athearn/MDC/accurail and 5% craftman. When train funds are low or when i dont have a structure to build, i like to do a craftman kit as it will occupy many hours. you get good bang for you hobby buck. shake the box car are great for building a fleet though and you get standard quality throughout
Branchline pullmans are a real favorite of mine, they look great when done and while walthers cars are nice they don’t hold a candle to the branchlines when properly done.
Hello.
I have different steam era freight train projects:
1: a VIRGINIAN unit coal train of 16 cars. These are the unique 12wheeled so called “Battleship” gondolas. These are rtr and made of brass. I am still looking for more of these cars.
2: a unit PFE reefer block, currently these are about 60 cars. Almost all of them are Sunshine, Red Caboose and Intermountain craftsman kits. Only a few are rtr Intermountain and Trix. Also here I am still looking for more kits. The train shall become about 100 cars in lenght.
3: a C&O unit coal train, currently these are about 70 cars. About half of them are lower detail Athearn and Accurail kits, the other half are Atlas rtr cars. Different types of course, but I am still looking for more to have about 100 cars for a prototypical train. This is the only train I make the compromise to use lower detail cars, because it is impossible to build a C&O coal train of many different types (which is necessary to be prototyical) of highly detailed cars - because they don’t exist.
4: a mixed through freight train of about 130 cars. That train is almost complete, and almost the entire train is built from craftsman kits of Intermountain, Red Caboose, Proto 2000, Tichy, Westerfield, and many different old (but heavily upgraded) wood kits (which I like most). A very few cars are brass.
Only keeping p2k rtr, some ertl, altlas billboard reefers and mdc’s that were produced with individual grabs (upgraded the grabs and sturups and added grant line turnbuckels ect.)Also got a collection of well built Ambroid, Northeastern, Mainline (you have to upgrade these), central valley and others of the wood craftsman type.
All of mine are 5 minute kits or ready to run. I simply don’t have the money for Craftsman kits. Plus since I model the 1990s era most of the cars I need are readily availible. My favorites are Athearn Blue Box and Walthers.
My collection consists of 75% craftsmen kits and 25% RTR. I also like upgrading simple kits, such as Athern or Roundhouse with hand grabs and/or truss rods. In addition I like to re-paint and re-herald my rolling stock to match my layout theme and logo.
I started off with Athearn BB and MDC kits, and they still make up about two-thirds of my fleet. As the budget allows, I’m slowly upgrading my fleet with Accurail, Bowser and Branchline kits.
Currently, I don’t have any craftsman kits. I simply don’t have the patience.
Nick
All of my freight cars come from Athearn,Atlas,MDC,Accurail,Intermoutain(RTR only) and some KDs.
I haven’t done a craftsman car kit in years and have no plans to start.[:D]
About 95% of my freight cars are RTR. Of that number, the vast majority are out-and-out tinplate! Upgrades have been confined to changing couplers (Baker to Kadee) and improving the lettering. (The other 5% are kitbashes.)
All of my operable passenger equipment is RTR, but many of the individual cars are assembled (by other people) craftsman kits. I do have a small collection of craftsman-level kits and scratchbuilding supplies which will be used when the need for those cars arises.
My diesel locos are all RTR, coupler changes only. My electrics all started as kits. My steam locos also started as kits, but some of them have been provided with extra details and mechanism modifications. Several on-hand steam loco kits are scheduled for major kitbashing since they are unsuitable for use as is (wrong prototype, wrong track gauge, wrong scale…)
I don’t include my whimsey collection of US prototype locos - three 4-8-4’s, a 2-10-4 and a GG1. All were acquired ready to run. (Proof that they’re whimsey locos - none of the steamers have a front coupler.)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I favor pre-decorated plastic kits such as PK2000 or Accurail that take more time than Athearn blue box as they are more detailed and funner to build. I don’t care for ready to run because building kits is what the hobby is about for me.
My stuff is a mixture of stuff that I’ve bought or been given over the years. In the 80’s I was buying Athearn Blue Box stuff because that was all that I could get. I really only had one shop that I went too and that is all they carried.
In the 90’s I bought or was given a few of the New Proto kits, and for me they were pretty daunting. Thisis when I noticed my eyesight was starting to go so I did the right things and got better lighting for the work area.
In 2000 I started to notice that it was harder and harder to find kits in my area. This is when I started looking for shops while I was travelling.
My current LHS across town buys as many kits as he can find. He also bought a heat shrink machine so he can display the box as OPEN without losing the pieces out of the box. Good Idea!
My purchase in the past 3 years have been 90% RTR, 5% Used, and 5% new Kits. MOst of my RTR stuff has been items like the intermodal trailer train stuff which I’ve never seen in kit form. I also buy items that are different than strictly one Roadline because I try and model what I “SEE” or my Grand Son “SEES” when he’s with me. In a couple more years, I’ll be back to buying kits for my Grand son when he’s interested. Of course these will be for his trains, and I can only hope that his interest in railroading stays as he gets a little older.
Chris
Most of my operational rolling stock is near RTR (change wheels and add KD’s). A couple are simple kits and one a more involved plastic kit. I have and continue to buy craftsman kits, other kits, RTR, etc… I just don’t have the time for them right now.
Enjoy
Paul
100% of my freight and passenger cars are shake the box kits or RTR. Everyone of them is there to do a job, not to be a show piece. Some have required a little more than 5 minutes to assemble due to checking and adjusting the couplers but 15 minutes is the most I would invest in any piece of rolling stock. I see no sense in investing hours on a single piece with so much detail that it stands out from the rest of the cars and makes everything else look worse by comparison. It’s much better to have a consistent level of detail throughout your fleet so that whatever detail might be lacking is not so obvious.
I do have one old Ambroid UP box car that has been sitting in a box on the shelf for about 25 years. Probably the only reason I bought it was because I was modeling the UP and would buy just about anything with their label on it, whether it fit my era or not. This one doesn’t fit either the era or locale of my current layout. The only way it will get built is if I run out of things to do.
RTR: 10% (mostly IM, P2K and RC cars that they don’t make as kits)
Shake the box: 20% (mostly Accurail boxcars, Athearn twin hoppers and lots of Bowser)
Upgraded STB: 10% (wire grabs and proto-specific details added)
Advanced plastic kits: 35% (P2K, IM, RC, Tichy, Branchline)
Resin: 25%, mostly unbuilt (100+ kits in boxes!)
Brass: 1 car (swapmeet find - $5!)
Scratchbuilt: 3 cars. That number will be growing in the future, as I just finished my first scratchbuilt master for a resin boxcar. I’ve got several other boxes and gons that I’d like to have, and will only see if I do them myself!
It really depends on what era, prototype, and scale I am modeling. For even HO and HOn3 in 1900, there is simply not a great variety available RTR or as “shake-the-box” kits. Although this is very slowly changing with regards to RTR, most manufacturers do not go back in time quite far enough because doing so makes them miss the all-important transition-era sales in standard gauge and 1930-50s in narrow gauge. And since metal underframes were just being introduced at the TOC, wood craftsman kits make into pretty good representations of the dominant wood cars.
Because stryene plastic kits generally do a good job of representing transition-era mass-produced steel cars, there are relatively few craftsman kits for these prototypes.
Manufacturers produce what sells. If they don’t, they don’t survive. And since many (perhaps most) model railroaders will buy what is available rather than doing without, the trend towards the production of popular eras/prototypes/scales in RTR is reinforced.
just my thoughts
Fred W