I am looking for a subway car, light rail car, or modern trolley car in 1:64 or smaller scale. They can be die-cast or plastic, just not too expensive as I need 500 of them for some diaramas I am putting together and they will only be a small part of it.
Can anyone please tell me who manufactures them? I have searched the web and am not having much luck.
Thanks.
PS. I also need 500 stoplights in the same scale.
American prototype? non-powered? Philadelphia had some models of their cars non-powered made, but I dunno where to find 500 of them,…
Bachmann has the PCC car which are still in use today. Hit the Walthers catalogue in your nearest hobbyshop for streetlights.
There is plenty of german or european prototype Light Rail cars to choose from.
but cheapo, dunno.
The only cheapo idea is to find a Hobby Lobby store or maybe some toy stores has this, there is a toy train available using New York style subway cars, its about N scale in size and there is a variety of operating dioramas to go with it. Its exteremly toyish, but very curious, as you can put together a ton of these dioramas and everything runs on it on battery power.
Visit this page for an example and some humor. I hadda buy one of them just for funsies.
http://www.qtm.net/~dinwitty/rrfun/mondoxpress.htm
I will poke around a bit and see iff I can find sumpthin.
Life-Like made a nice HO set of 4 NYC subway cars, in 3 different paint schemes. They are available, but I don’t know what kind of numbers are still out there. Still, a full set (1 powered, 3 unpowered) will run you $130 at discount. My set, which have been detailed a bit, looks like this:
At the lower right is the tail end of a Bowser PCC car.
The quickest place to look for models is the Walthers website.
They are a major distributor handling a wide variety of scales and manufacturers, so it is a place to search for something and see who makes it etc.
I quickly found by Walthers search that Bachmann (“manufacturer”) has a PCC trolley in HO scale for $33 retail. You can order from Walthers, but for a large order of 500 trolleys, you would probably want to go to the manufacturer. By the way, I believe many if not most Bachmann products are made for Bachmann in China.
The PCC car was introduced in 1930s. It is the most modern car I could find mass produced on Walthers, and in fact is the most modern of “traditional” trolleys, ie built for the traditional trolley streetcar system.
Are you actually thinking of modern LIGHT RAIL VEHICLES which run in trains of 2 to 4 or more units often on a dedicated right of way, such as the system that has been in Houston for a couple of years?
A couple more questions about your needs. Do you need OPERATING cars, ie those that are powered and run by themselves by electrical power pickup from rails or trolley wires, or are you looking for non-moving static trolleys.
When you said “cheap”, is $33 per unit considered cheap for your purpose?
When you say your need 500 stoplights, do you mean lights with ability to change between cycles of red, yellow, green like street traffic lights, or do you mean railroad signals, or trolley signals. Do your 500 stoplights need to be able to control action of the trolleys automatically?
And now I have a somewhat critical comment, a kind I do not usually make about casual posts. But you say you are “putting together” “diaramas” for which 500 trolleys or subway vehicles will be only a small part, which sounds like a pretty grandiose project. It puzzles me that someone tackling such an undertaking misspells “diarama”.