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MTH Electric Trains HO scale Empire State Express set
I bought both the five-car set reviewed here and the one car that’s sold singly, baggage/tavern “Grover Cleveland”. (MTH also offers a two-coach set and a coach and diner set.) I like them very much, partly because my grandfather, his cousin and two of my uncles worked for the Budd Company when it was building stainless steel passenger cars in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
At least five of the original 1941 cars have been preserved by one of the railroad museums outside Rochester, NY; they were used on a special trip over the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville last fall.
Among other fine features, MTH has correctly put “Empire State Express” on some of the cars and “New York Central” on others. By the way, some of the coaches used on the real trains weren’t named for governors of New York State but simply had numbers so they could be used on other trains when not needed on the Empire State Express.
These are full-length models. Six cars themselves occupy about a half-circle of 22 inch or 24 inch radius track.
I have only two reservations about these beautiful models. The first is that their finish doesn’t, I think, look as much like stainless steel as some of Walthers’ recent HO cars, for example.
On the other hand, MTH’s “stainless” finish matches quite well with the finish of the old AHM/Rivarossi “corrugated” passenger cars, of which the coach matches the NYC’s 1941 Empire State Express cars and the grill car is close to the trains’ diners. (The “corrugated” observation replicates the two cars the Reading used at each end of its Crusader.) Those cars aren’t as well detailed as the MTH models, lacking interiors, shades and wire grabs, among other things; but they’re much less expensive and can be used to add cars to the train.
The best decals for adding (or changing) car names are in the special edition set Champion Decal Co. used to produce –
I left an important word out of what I wrote yesterday. The NYC Empire State Express Hudson steam loco that’s more detailed than the old Rivarossi one and has DCC and sound is from MTH Electric Trains, just like the splendid cars that match it.
I love this set. I only need one 2 car set to complete the whole consist but this is well worth the buy. The price is very reasonable especially when you consider the only other quality alternative is buying brass with costs four to five thousand dollars. MTH did a great job with this one
I ordered 8 cars together with the Hudson in summer 2009. Whilst the loco was delivered only a couple of weeks later, I had to wait more than 3 years for the cars. Now my stainless steel train is complete and it is really an eyecatcher. My impression is totally in line with Steven Otte’s review.
A big disappointment for me is that the beautiful cars don’t couple with their diaphragms touching. The ‘remedy’ for more realistic appearance described by Steven doesn’t work on my layout which has a minimum radius of 24" in tunnels. Other manufacturers found appropriate solutions - why didn’t MTH?