George, I’m with you. Although you only listed the cars you have, the reason you have them is the same reason I have many also… the Industrial Rail cars were first rate quality at a good price in a traditional non-scale size and with a wide variety of roadnames and changing road numbers to boot.
The caboose was the only real clinker in the line up, being just a little out of proportion too small to look right even with traditionally sized trains.
Everyone thinks metal equals quality. The door guides on the IR cars are plastic BUT they are well done. I much prefer the look of the IR double door box cars without the black metal door guides like others. The bases on the IR cars are plastic like many low end Lionel cars, yet it is a thicker plastic that locks into the shell in 4 places unlike the Lionel cars.
Plus only IR has made traditionally sized box cars in BNSF and NS. No one else has done that… only Williams and their box cars are a tad big for my taste. Not too big to not have a few, but too big to want to have more.
I was looking forward to more relases from IR and I hope the company that bought their tools and dies reads this. I’d love to see those IR cars in CSX, CP Rail, CPR, Conrail, Norfolk Southern and BNSF… all roadnames being mostly overlooked by the other companies as far as traditionally sized trains are concerned. And everytime someone makes a Conrail box car, it ends up being BLUE! Funny since Conrail only had one blue box car, but thousands in various shades of brown and tuscan and even in Penn Central green.
In fact, the only reason K-Line made Train-19 and MTH made Rugged Rails is because of the Industrial Rail cars. And notice how both companies have let these lines slowly fade after Industrial Rail vanished. Well, at least K-Line still adds one or two cars to the Train-19 line (which will probably soon be the Train-24 line… what a dumb name). MTH has let Rugged Rails completely languish with not one new offering outside
All,
Earlier this year in this forum I read that Costco, of all retailers, was going to carry O-27 trains based on the IDM dies. There was speculation about who would provide the motive power. If it turns out to be true all I can say is, good by Sam Clue hello Costco! The Industrial Rail cars are fun to collect too, I have made up a list of the cars I have, or want, that I keep in my wallet for train shows or when I’m on the road for work and visit a new train or hobby store. Shopping on Ebay I’ve found many cars from $10 to $20.
Yes, I’ve heard about Costco obtaining the IR molds so we will see what happens.
And yes, the covered hopper was a little small (by scale standards) but really looks nice on a smaller 027 layout. And it doesn’t look nearly as undersized as did the IR “SP” stype caboose.
If Costco doesn’t add any new tooling, I do hope they will continue to offer a variety of roadnames in changing number - especially the modern roadnames that are so ignored by everyone else in this particular size of train car.
I wi***hat when IR had tooled up their original box car, they had opted to go with an outside braced box car minus roofwalk in the same size as their other box car. It would have been nice not to have a repeat of what is already available. But I still prefer the quality of the IR box cars and especially the double door one.
You always read about this top-line item, that top-line item… scale hoppers, scale milk cars… all that is fine too. But I suspect there are many operators who run these Industrial Rail cars (in quantity too) who don’t necessarily write about it here.
Spanky, one day I’ll get to post a photo of my Nofolk Southern Crane Car work caboose made from up from the same style IR car but with Marx, Lionel and K-Line parts.
The IR cars are well done, good lookers. They were also priced very affordably. I bought a set of 3 hoppers new for $19.95. They tended to derail quite easily until I opened up the couplers with a dremel tool. That was my only negative thing to say about them. The are very nice looking freight cars.