Hello all , I was wondering how you all feel about IHC passenger cars . http://www.ihc-hobby.com/cgi-bin/bsc.cgi?sn=QN151T9829L208533840F15570E449
And does anyone used or have them .
I just bought a BLI Hudson and want to haul passengers.
They don’t give much info on the cars , like do they have metal wheels and what couplers are on them ( which I know I can change them)and I do think they are lighted for the money but lights can be added .
But if I have to add a lot cost goes up quick.
Thanks for the time Joe
Good Morning Joe,
I own several sets of IHC HW, CS and SS passenger cars . The cars have decent paint schemes but they come unweighted, unlighted and with hideous couplers and wheels. As I enjoy tinkering with my trains I use the following methods of improvement for the cars, First I install steel weights at the bottom that I paint black and attach with double sided tape. Second I remove the trucks and drill ot the bolster to accept a nut and bolt assembly and get rid of the plastic pin that held the trucks when purchased. I then install metal wheels, usually P-2000 and finally I add the McHenry replacement couplers using the kadee height gauge. A little filing around the end door diaphrams is sometimes required. I buy the steel, nuts and bolts at Lowe’s, cut the steel to fit and then spray paint it black. At this point the cars still do not have an interior or lights. So the costs do start to add up. But with a sale price this month of less than sixty dollars for an eight car set it is not a bad starting point. Also check back a couple of pages there was a post on IHC diesels and cars a few days ago. Hope this helps. John
Joe, I have some of these and they are OK, but they do need some work to get them to perform well.
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V.Poor plastic wheelsets in possibly even worse trucks. They do run with this combination but they are not close to the performance of the Wathers cars. I have not yet changed these parts, though for many it would be the first thing to do.
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Couplers. Unless they have changed in the last year or so they have horn hook couplers talgo mounted to the trucks. McHenry makes a drop in knuckle coupler which I use with good success.
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Detail. The cars are very generic and all paint schemes are the same models. If you don’t know, or care about exact prototype trains then this is not an issue. I don’t yet know enough for this to bother me.
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They are not lit. Kits are available, but by the time you have added the trucks with pick up and the lights it adds to the cost substantially. The Walthers cars require light kits also.
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Interiors are empty. IHC sells some cheap interior kits that are OK if you paint them. The gaudy plastic they are molded in is awful.
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Running Charachteristics. These cars are not heavy enough. You need to add weight to bring them to NMRA standards, quite a lot I might say. Adding weight improves them alot.
All in all they are inexpensive, and will do the job, but if you want them to be great they need time and money spent on them. Add up all the costs and they suddenly are not so cheap. For me, they fill a need and I don’t regret buying them.
I’ve bought cheap cars before. By the time I got them up to spec with my other cars, I could have bought quality cars in the first place.
My personal opinion is that they are great fillers for the garbage can. There are many good passenger cars out there (kit or otherwise) to waste any time on them. By the time you have invested your TIME and money in one of these beasts, you would have been just as well off buying a quality kit or RTR car.
Hi Joe: I’ve got some old cars that I’ve been running and I’ve found them to need some work on the running gear and couplers. I body mounted KD #5 couplers which work fine but on wide curves only. The coach is actualy a Soo Line car. I plugged the end windows to help the look a little. Of course if you model Soo Line you,re in business. The wheels are still the ones as delievered. They will be changed. Since I got them so long ago I don’t have alot invested so the mods are worth while. These are the heavy weight cars. I hope thia helps.
I’ve got a couple IHC heavyweights and a few old Athearns streamliners that I use as stand-ins until I can replace them with Walthers or compairble equipment. It works in that capacity, but once you have used the higher-end plastic equipment, you’ll love it far too much to go back to the cheaper stuff. Especially since Walthers and others regularly sell such equipment at a discount (Walthers seems to have a sale rotation so everything it seems will eventually go on sale)
You’ve got a beautiful engine with that BLI Hudson. I’d go with Walthers or Bachman Spectrum heavyweights over the IHCs.
Cheers!
~METRO
The IHC cars are good practice for superdetailing etc. You can build a credible car from them with some of the suggestions previously given. In contrast to the offerings of Walthers,Branchline etc, the IHC cars really leave a lot to be desired…They would be possible candidates for work,maintenence of way trains, but those seem to be fast disappearing in this day and age.
IHC cars are Rivaossi imitations
1.The passenger cars need couplers, metal wheels or trucks, and weights to run right.
2.IHC lighting kits cost more than the cars, as do their metal trucks.
3.Being 80’ cars they also need 44"r to look right or 22"r to perform reasonably.
If you put the time and money into them to upgrade - they’re not prototype (ATSF never had blue - D&TGW never had yellow) , but OK.
Don’t even think about it.
By the time you spend all that $$ to get them to run decdent, you have spents as much or more than the “expensive” kato or walthers cars.
I use them as SCENERY. They are not worth all the expense to make them operative because they can’t be made reliable no matter what. I have found that they make great cheap fillers for my coach yard adjacent to the passenger terminal. It gives the impression that iit s a BIG railroad with Lots of passenger cars. Buy Walthers and Branchline, you’ll never regret it.
Thank you All for your input . Sorry I have not replied sooner but have not been around my PC.
I think I’ll just look into the better cars right from the get go .
THANKS again. Joe
Well I was fortunate enough to be given an 8 car set of the Smooth side NYC and an 8 car set of the Corregated side also NYC by a fellow Forum member. So as I have nothing invested in them I think I will go ahead and get the 8 pack interiors that are on sale for the smooth side set. I all ready have put metal wheels on all of them. They also have the Kadee 508 talgo adapter (I think that is what it is called) and I have put Kadee #5’s on all. I am thinking of buying a pair of the 4 wheel trucks to see if they are worth it. I like the looks of the smooth side over the corregated side so I will concentrate my efforts on them. My plan on lighting is putting a 9 v battery and LEDs with a magnetic switch. I may have to pull the shades down on several windows to hide the battery but I think it will be better and cheaper than buying the lighting kit. It should be a fun project.
Terry[8D]
Yup, IHC cars are crap out of the box, but I added IHC’s metal axles not trucks, brought them up to NRHA weight specs using automotive stick on weights & they roll rather decently considering I don’t have more than $20 Canadian invested in them VS $50 Canadian for Walthers offereings.
Don’t get me wrong, I only have 2 IHC cars VS 12 Walthers cars.
I do prefer the Walthers cars but the IHC ones were cheap enough to invest in.
Gordon