I was thinking of expanding my roster of Pacemaker boxcars and was considering these RTR Intermountain cars. On closer inspection I looked at what, I guess, is supposed to be a grab iron! These things look more like Mack truck bumpers than grab irons.
I’ve built quite a few Intermountain kits and the details were molded as fine as frog hair…
So I wondered if any of you have any of these cars (or other road names) and are the grabs, not to mention the ladders on the 8" standoffs, as bad as they look in the photos?
The stirrups and the end sill moldings look great, but those grab irons…wow, I expected better from Intermountain!
I took a look at the ones I have, Ed, and - yea - they are that big. [:(] Maybe IM was trying to incorporate some sort of “shadow” illusion??? (Okay, maybe not…) At least they got the red going all the way to the bottom edge of the side.
I would have expected better from IM! They must have gone to the lowest bidder in Guangzhou. Looks to me like the car sits pretty high on the bolsters, too.
I’ll stick with my Blue box and Bev-Bel cars for now.
I don’t have any Intermountain boxcars or r-t-r, but even the plastic grabs which come with the kits are grossly over-size. I replace both the grabs and the sill steps with metal parts.
Those reefers look great, Wayne! They have the million mile look…
I checked out an unfinished IC R-40-23 reefer I have on the shelf and the grabs do look a bit large but no where near what they have on that Pacemaker box.
I also have an Erie PS-1 IM kit. The grab irons are fairly fine but for some reason IM is using a four bolt (or rivet) attachment to the car body. I wonder why they didn’t follow P2Ks lead? Their kits seem to have close to scale grabs.
These are bracket grabs which adds to the mass. I don’t think there are any after market ones that are right, but tichy has some that come close.
I have also removed the grabs while leaving the brackets in place & used CA to attach a piece of .012 brass rod between them with about .030 between the rod & the body. jerry
When they were finalizing the details with the factory in China, somehow the tooling guy thought they were to be sized for Himalayan yeti or Pennsylvanian Big Foot., Must have been a problem with the iPhone translation app.
Thanks for your kind words, Ed. Both cars are actually too modern for my late-'30s era railroad, although I’ve back-dated the appearance of the MDT car by painting the hardware black. The car itself is, I believe, a 1940s design. The Santa Fe reefer is an old-enough car, but the lettering scheme is post-'30s - one of these days I’ll get around to re-painting it. [:$]
In addition to the Tichy grabs which Jerry mentions, Detail Associates also offers bracket-style grabs, as seen on this old Train Miniature A.R.A. boxcar, masquerading as a faux CPR “mini-box”. Made from engineering plastic, they’re difficult to attach and don’t hold paint very well, either. I need to go back and pin the brackets in place with short lengths of .010" brass wire.
The Red Caboose X-29 boxcars offer free-standing bracket-style grab irons, moulded in regular styrene plastic, but the grab portion is overly thick. I cement them in place, and when the cement has cured, cut away the grab and drill the brackets (solid, as you can see) to accept ones formed from .012" brass wire.
I do agree about the grabs on the Pacemaker car - too thick, and very disappointing coming from Intermountain.
