There are a group of these cars on ebay for sale but i’ve never owned one
can any one tell me about the quality
TIA
Well, the best comparison would be the cars that Bachmann and Life-Like put in their lowest-end train sets. Rather crude by current modeling standards, and with truck-mounted horn-hook couplers.
These are the sorts of cars that are $1.00-$2.00 apiece at trains shows.
Bachmann N “silver series” cars have truck mounted couplers. The one that walthers acidently gave me had some weird version of a knuckle coupler.
Life-Like now make knuckle couplers that are supposed to be direct replacements for their horn hook couplers. I saw them in the Walthers catalog that arrived this week. They would be good for converting the older “toy” cars over so they can run with current stock.
433-1436 is the part # for 2 pairs $3.29
433-1427 is the part # for 10 pairs $6.98
I have some of my old Tyco cars from when I was a kid along with some Life-Like ones that came in a set we had gotten for my son a couple years ago. I thought about experimenting with weathering on these cars. These knuckle couplers would then allow me to use them on the layout. I was thinking of using them more so for abandoned cars on remote sidings.
A hobby shop in Tucson, Arizona sells those, brand new, for around $1.50 to $2.00 each. They appear to be extremely crude and cheaply made.
Truck mounted couplers on freight and passenger cars is the current and long time standard used by all N Scale manufacturers and they work far better then their HO counter parts that has cheap truck mounted couplers…
Many N Scalers change their truck mounts to body mounts on their cars-a easy task in most cases…
You may be dealing with a hobbyshop that bought a truckload of these things a few years ago. AFAIK the Industrial O was sold to Atlas a few years ago. They have some very nice O scale cars.
In N scale, the cheapy ones were comparable with A1G in quality. At $1-2, they are paint practice candidates to fill out a fleet. They have a few bodystyles in 1-2 paint schemes that are reproduced.
Repaint them, swap trucks for MTL’s, and they can be made to look better.
I thought they were OOP since the takeover of LL by Walthers. Perhaps the dies were moved to the CC factory? The only alternative in the price point may be the Atlas TrainMan cars.
I got some a few years ago in n-scale just for practicing weathering techniques, etc., without feeling guilty about messing up some really good stuff. I figured I could set 'em up as static display on a siding if they weren’t any account. But guess what, they roll pretty well.