has anyone heard of a rtr co. named Industrial Rail Train? did they package rtr freight cars for other companies like con-cor, arnold or bev-bel? or did they manufacture the models themselves? what was the quality? are they still around?
I’ve seen cars marketed under the Industrial Rail brand. I am guessing these are made by the factory that manufactures Life-Like’s frieght cars, at about the same quality and a somewhat lower price. (I have been able to buy these for as little as $1.00 a car.)
Arnold and Con Cor are old brands in N scale (actually among the pioneers of the scale) At least in the old days Arnold were made on Germany and Con Cor in Japan. Bev Bel has used cars from a number of manufactures for there limited run offerings , but I don’t thin they have ever used Industrial Rail.
Industrial Rail hasn’t been around very long in N scale. They may be an attempt to enter N scale by the company of the same name that makes O27 (Actually fairly nice looking O gauge cars to S (?) scale proportions)
thanx for the info! ive never seen Lifelike cars, so i dont know their quality rating. All i have are MDC’s and Atlas, both older models, the MDC not appearing to have the same clean detail as the Atlas. They dont roll as well either. So how DOES Lifelike compare to Atlas in quality, exactly?
If you haven’t done so, equipping the cars with MictoTrains truck/couplers would be a tremendus improvement. I’ve alwas considered the older Atlas cars ("70 -early 90’s or so) the MDC and most Bachmann to be equal. The lettering on Con Cor was poor but the basic body casting good.
I sure I have some Life Like but could pick them out of my collection. I looked at the web site they appear to be similar to the older Atlas
For years MicroTrains were by far the best in both detail and lettering, but the older MT have been surpassed by the new Atlas, Red Caboose, Intrermountan, and the new Micro Trains cars. On the layout, however, the detail is hard to see.
Life Like, MDC, older Atlas etc are not state of the art but are servicable when equipped with Micro Trains trucks/couplers. I have not looked closely at Industrial Rail, but they are probably OK too.
The appearance of any of the less detailed cars can be easily improved by replacing roof walks and brake wheels. Some people use brass detail parts, I usually use MicoTrains plastic detail parts.
They are very easy to convert to MTL couplers. They are VERY cheap, at $1.00 per car. Very limited selection with a few body styles. You can get a bunch of them, cheap, and paint them to your roadname. They tend to be produced from old LifeLike dies that need some work to remove flash and other defects. Mostly you may find them in the bargain bin at your LHS as a loss leader. The whells may be chemically blackened metal ones. As long as they are in gague, they will be OK. I’d have to check if the flange is too big for smaller code track.