N-Scale Passenger Car Inquiry...What's with the proliferation of late model cars?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Hello everyone…and thank you in advance. I’m a big fan of the steam era and the passenger travel that was so popular in the first half of the 20th century. Apparently I’m not the only one, given the many magazine articles recently published about early passenger travel and the many ways to model it.

My question (comment) to the forum is this…given the popularity of modelling passenger trains, why is it so difficult to find good N-scale passenger cars? There are numerous smoothside cars on the market but their quality is less than desirable…and heavyweights (my favorite) are limited to only one or two manufacturers, one of which isn’t even making them anymore. Furthermore, there seems to be a huge proliferation of later model passenger cars…which doesn’t seem to make sense given that passenger travel died off quickly in the later part of the century and fewer people run them on their layouts.

Does anyone have any manufaturer insight as to why the above is true? What can we do to change the situation? I’d just like to find someone who makes good (meaning not cheap looking), quality (meaning nice craftsmanship) heavyweigths. They don’t have to be brass or overly expensive…just comparable to the quality of the abundant freight stock that’s already on the market.

Your thoughts?

Brad

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just wondering if this works

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Most of the recent N scale passenger car releases have been by manufacturers of locomotives. So they release passenger cars that will help sell the locos they are building at the time. When Kato had more transition-era locos in production, they were selling passenger cars decorated for the Daylight and Lark, etc. So it goes in cycles.

Another example, Athearn’s only N scale passenger car offering is designed to help sell with their only N scale passenger loco. These are also pretty modern.

Current exception I think of is the California Zephyr cars, again these help sell a limited tun of locomotives.

Jon

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I’ll agree with this - the only decent N scale passenger cars I could find a few years ago were the ConCor streamlined ones. The couplers on these were terrible but the actual car was pretty decent. Just a pity that their bilevel commuter cars weren’t as good - mine does a pretty good impersonation of a metronome as it rolls from side to side!

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I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective. I suppose there is probably some truth to that, it’s all about the sales of the locomotives they’re producing.

And yes, my cars are somewhat like a metronome as well, only because of the entire truck, not just the couplers.