Hello, folks. After 30-some years on the back burner my model railroading interest has perked up again, so in addition to subscribing to MR I’ve been discovering how easy it is to spend way too much money on eBay buying model train stuff.
One recent purchase included several of these nice HO scale Santa Fe “Regal Series” Pullman sleepers. The seller didn’t know who made them. Would any of you recognize them?
Thanks!
Dean
Judging by the trucks it looks like a Walthers car. Welcome back to the hobby! [8D]
My guess would be IHC.
Definitely IHC. The trucks, the diaphragms and the rivets flanking the windows are the giveaways.
This sleeper is one of the four car types from their “1940” series. The others were a coach, a grille car and an observation car.
They’re International Hobby Corporation (IHC) cars with Kadee coupler adapters.
FYI of all concerned: IHC appears to have gone out of business. Their web site is gone and they no longer advertise in any of the hobby publications.
IHC’s passenger cars were made by Rivarossi many years ago, with the most recent products coming from Mehano of Slovenia. Mehano filed for bankruptcy last year, and IHC apparently couldn’t find another supplier and so went out of business.
Thanks very much!
Dean
I think they are either Walthers or Kadee, but Im not sure. May I just say, your close up photography is astounding! I have never seen such clear close up images.
Mehano’s Slovenian web site is still up, but does not seem to have been updated in a while. So while they filed for bankruptcy protection, I don’t believe that they have ceased trading. For sure Mehano made the locomotives marketed by IHC, but the more recent passenger cars are marked “Made in China” and I think not part of the Mehano product line.
Not only Kadee adaptor kit and coupler, but I think those are Kadee wheel sets. And did I see an interior on the first photo? Some one did some serious and good work to make these decent cars good ones.
Phil
The batch I bought includes three of those four types, then. No grille car but three sleepers, four coaches, and an observation car, all consistent in general appearance. The observation car has a nice little Super Chief end-of-train emblem.
Thanks! I have a decent camera but not a great one, a Canon S1 that was new in 2004. The main things that make those photos look good are (a) lots of light, (b) holding the camera very still, and (c) using the biggest and highest-quality image setting when taking the picture. The original photos weren’t so close up, but they were 2048 x 1536 pixel size (the max my camera can take). That makes it possible to crop out the parts you don’t want, in effect zooming in for a closeup, but with no distortion or loss of image quality.
No interior figures or custom detailing that I can see, but there are seats and compartments and the like, and the cars roll very smoothly. I’m delighted with them. They were from an estate and the eBay auction didn’t say much about them (or about the locomotive that came with them, which turned out to be a Proto 2000 E8) but the price was very right. Makes me feel better about some of my other purchases, which didn’t turn out to be too thrifty…
Dean