Walther’s caved in and just announced that their upcoming UP cars will come with all irons installed from the factory!
Even though I sometimes enjoy the process of installing grab irons that I have to do on the entire EB set, I welcome this change. Who knows, maybe they’ll go crazy next year and start doing multi-color interiors. Then these $60+ cars start matching content of what they used to do for $35 couple years ago. [:I]
Anyway this is good news. Especially since these grab irons will most likely come painted, something I don’t even think about doing on the ones I’m installing.
Now, if they would offer alternate decal sets for the various “City” streamliners they’re producing so that I can label mine “City of San Francisco” instead of just “Union Pacific”, I’d be a happy camper.
I expect that walthers will offer a decal sheet with all the city names on it for the consumers choosing, they tend to make 1 decal sheet per car series that covers all the versions of said car
I got an e-mail a month back or so when they asked these kind of questions in a survey. After that I’ve been receiving several of these surveys. On average one every week where they ask questions like this and on new buildings, cars, engines and so on.
My guess is that this is a response to their surveys, at least that is how I read it. If so, that is one great thing to do. I will easily donate ten minutes a week answering there questions if they actually listens to them as well!
I have to admit that when I reached age 65, I quit buying any Walthers rolling stock that required me to drill out the holes to install grabs. I broke too many bits because the arthritis in my hands made it hard to hold the drill steady enough. In my day, I drilled and installed hundreds, but my day is gone and I just won’t spend money on a car/kit that requires drilling.
Well that’s the problem…it’s not installing the grabs, it’s the drilling !! I have no problem with say a Kato locomotive that has a number of small grabirons and detail parts to install, but come with the holes already in place. It’s trying to drill those #80 or whatever holes that’s so maddening.
In my case with Walthers, I’d like to do the Hiawatha cars but probably will only get the cars that are really unique to the Milwaukee like the Observation car and maybe the Great Dome, and use Rapido cars for the rest of the train so I don’t have to try to drill holes for all the cars. (That actually works out OK for me, I’m mainly interested in assembling a train as used now by the “Friends of 261” for excursions, and most of their cars are cars from other railroads painted to look like Milwaukee cars.)
Unfortunately I imagine they won’t be going back anytime soon and changing the existing cars (Empire Builder, Super Chief, 20th Century) to have factory-installed grabs.[sigh]
Thank God we still have some brands supplying fully detailed locos and rolling stock. Here in Europe, manufacturers are charging horrendous prices for semi-finished products. Ok, most of the holes are already drilled, but that´s no guarantee that all the parts will fit. Or that all parts are supplied…
When I have to pay $ 800 for a loco, I don´t want to see any user-installed parts.