I recently acquired a couple of these HO passenger cars. The level of detail is incredible, make the Walthers cars without the details added look second rate. I would rank the Kato cars as good if not better than the current Rapido.
While the Walthers cars include a bunch of preformed wire grabs to finish off their cars, the Kato cars have used molded plastic for their add on detail grabs. The holes for these are pre-drilled and with a bit of effort easily inserted.
It is to bad that other than the Business cars that Kato only offer the HI-Level streamlined cars. Wonder why Kato did not offer any other passenger cars in the early streamlined type. Sure would have given Walthers and Rapido competition.
I agree with you, don7. … I also have two: CB&Q and NP. I have had them for a few years. When I bought them, I also purchased the Kato lighting kit which was sold separately, and certainly was well worth the money. … The Burlington car would look better with “metalized” finsh, but the silver paint is OK with me. The NP car’s two-tone green does not come close to matching the two-tone green on other NP cares I have.
I’m in love with my pair as well, though the UP Cheyanne does not match any other UP cars I own- too yellow. Not sure which is right, but I’nm gonna bet Rapido over Kato colorwise, and I haven’t gotten any of the Walthers cars as yet to compare threeway.
SP in stainless you just cannot mess up. I want to find the B&O version too, and part of me would love to find one and do the PV Caritas, though Caritas is smoothside.
You answered your own question - Kato does not want to compete with Walthers or Rapido by “dividing” the market for a specific product. This is a business philosophy many companies in this business followed years ago - only a few work that way now.
Why make something that is already out there when there is still so much yet to be made?
And, Kato is an N scale company that just happens to dable in HO from time to time.
Just had a surprise while running a new passenger train.
I finally obtained the missing passenger cars I needed to complete a full passenger consist. I have mainly Walthers Budd cars and for the end car I bought a Kato Business car, that started this posting when I realized how detailed the Kato car was…
Well, not only is the level of detail great, this car comes with built in end and running lights. What a surprise to finally run this car in a consist and see the red and green running lights as well as the red end light.
There was nothing on the packaging indicating that this car came with operating running lights.
I really like my Kato business car. Got the Santa Fe “Topeka”. Not accurate at all for the real car, but still a great looking model.
Planned to re letter it as Atchison (Santa Fe railway) but surprisingly Micro Scale doesn’t have any Santa Fe business car decal sets yet. Would make a good minical set I’d think.