Hello all. I just purchased a couple of N scale Atlas steam era wood side PFE (Pacific Fruit Express) reefers off of ebay earlier tonight for $7.00 each - plus shipping and insurance of course. I figured why not seeing as how they generally go for $12.00 and up most of the time… Anyways. One of the reasons I think they went as cheap as they did is because they have identical numbers, which is something I’ve learned to live with. I figure I can always renumber them some day down the road when I’ve got nothing else to do. I also have about ten Santa Fe coal gondolas, and most of them have identical numbers as well. The way I deal with this is by placing a car or two in between the identical ones that do have different numbers to break them up a bit…
Gosh, I didn’t know anyone even paid attention to those little, bitty numbers in N scale…
:>)
Nah, just kidding.
N usually has a bit fewer choices available. I’ve noticed that Micro-Trains generally releases cars in single numbers, while in HO its cousin Kadee puts out pairs of differently numbered cars. More typical are releases from Red Caboose and Intermountain, which will put out 6 or 12 different road numbers of the same car in each run. If you want to represent certain prototypes, you have to accept some of that at times, no matter what scale you model in. Otherwise it’s difficult to get a representative fleet of rolling stock assembled.
Your strategy sounds a lot like my own. For boxcars and other types generally handled as single cars, I stick to distinctive road numbers. I do have 12 Athearn hoppers that have duplicated numbers, two sets of the same six numbers. With traffic like coal being generally handled as cuts of cars, if not outright unit trains, it bothers me less to have duped numbers. And it’s virtually unnoticeable to visitors.
Yes; definitely, because it is impossible to operate with switch lists with duplicate car numbers - how do you delivered or picked up the correct car if there are dups?
Yes because it really seems kind of cheesy running the deja vu lines. Something about it just looks like sort of a we don’t give a **** display set up by employees at a toystore. What’d I’d really like to see is some enterprising company offer an un-numbered freight car. Like you have all the paint and logos but no numbers. Until then though I guess we’ll just have to be content to un-number them oursevles.
I personally don’t like converted-train structures on the layout…true they exist in the real world but on a layout, especially a small one, it seems like it’s more appropriate to maintain a good contrast between the things on the tracks and the things off the tracks. Unless you have a large layout, a building made from a boxcar still looks like a boxcar.
Tough to operate with cars that have identical numbers. (…unless you use one of those waybill-on-car systems, but those blow away any realism you’ve created.)
Right now, no. Eventually when I get around to full scale operations with computer generated switchlists, I will need unique numbers for the cars. For now, it is easily overlooked.
They don’t bother me too much, but I try not to run two or more identically numbered cars in one train. Most times, I’ll make a decal with a new number and put it over the original number.
True, but not everyone is into the “operations” part of the hobby. Most folks I’ve met don’t have a layout large enough to warrant renumbering cars for larger fleets, nor even room for more than a couple of folks around the layout. In fact, for many, smaller switching layouts are the norm and therein, it’s often a case of picking up one car and replacing it with an identical one, so we’re not talking long strings of similar cars at any particular industry or siding.
If you have the time and inclination to renumber cars, then have it, and that’s nice to see. however, in the long run, to me it’s not that big a deal. I guess it’s just where you set your priorities within the hobby, and since it’s a pretty HUGE hobby, with multiple areas of interest, there’s lots of room for everyone [:)]
At this point it doesn’t bother me, but hey… I only have around 30 pieces of rolling stock. Some of you have that many of ONE type car… [:D]
I can see where it wouldn’t be too good if you’re into operations which I will get into in the future. When that happens I’m going to have to learn to renumber.
