the new intermountain auto racks are very well detailed ( i think they are 89’ cars) with end doors that open and close. I heard they are very delicate do’s anyone know about them before I spend money on them. Are they worth it around 89 dollars i think or less. rambo1…
They are delicate and the panels on some are warped and I think the latest from Walthers are better.
I think they are more nicely detailed than other cars.
I have converted one Walthers car to have Plano panels, for the see thru look, it was a lot of work but looks nice.
If you want durability you would want the Wathers car, if you want as colose to scale as you can buy, go for the other car.
Wait a second here, $89 for an autorack? You must be joking. Thats just crazy, I don’t care if it has working doors, good lord thats nuts.
I thought the Walthers ones were pricey at $40/ea.
I have 3 from the first run (haven’t picked up my new ones yet). The detail is there and no complaints about paint/graphics etc, just the panels kinda ruin it for me. They are just barely attached and some of them look like they were stepped on before they were put on. I think they would be an awesome $50-$60 model, but I would not buy any more for $89. I find it hard to open the doors while they’re sitting on the track, you almost have to pick them up and put them back.
This would be my first imperfect purchase from IMRC.
It says on the website that MSRP is $70 http://www.intermountain-railway.com/ho/hoautoracks.htm
Is the quality really that bad on all of them or is it just some that are damaged? I was thinking of getting just 1.
I don’t own any of them, but you can definitely find them for $55-59. At $85 in the US you are simply paying too much. Of course, that price is the reason I don’t own any of them. I had trouble with the Walthers ones being $25-40 so I don’t see the IM ones coming to my layout anytime soon. I have about a dozen of the Walthers ones from various releases and one of the articulated Atlas models and all of those are great, esp if you put IM metal wheels on the older ones. I’ve seen the new IM ones, and while nice, I’ve never felt the desire to look inside of any of these models or open the doors.
If I was modeling a auto rack load/unload facility, then maybe having one of the IM models open being unloaded/loaded would be a neat feature scene. Other than that, I’d go with the Walthers for my $.
Member price at Dallas Model Works is $54.80.
I got five of them. You have to be real careful opening the end doors as it’s easy to break something. The see-through effect is nice, but the screens are more transparent than the prototype. On the real ones I could never figure out exactly what cars were being carried.
It’s amazing how an $89 speculation turned into an almost maybe fact. The Intermountain website shows a list price of $68.95.
So, for those of you who insist you’d never pay $89 for this car, rest easy. You don’t have to.
Ed
While the list price is 68.95 you can purchase them from a number of online retailers for much less. The greatest discount was 25%. Look around and you can get a bargain, of course 51.79 is still a high price.
Paul
The $89 price was from the op, I think I paid around $55 for my first 3.