Hi. I am looking at getting a four car set of rivarossi heavyweight passenger cars in GN livery. I just wanted to know how these cars are. I’m not super concerned with the level of detail, I just want to know how the cars are overall. Super cheap? Mid-grade? High quality? I appreciate any info.
Generally speaking, they are a good choice in model. Detail is decent even by today’s standards. They can easily be upgraded with wire grab irons. Underbody detail is cast in place, so upgrading that is harder, but hopefully you’ll not be viewing them belly-up too often! LOL
When I was buying them in the 1980s, interiors were optional, iirc. The car floors were predrilled with holes for wiring the car for electrical pickup from the trucks for lighting, but the wheels were plastic. Horn-hook couplers were truck mounted on long bars for trainset curves. Body mounting Kadee couplers is doable. The factory paint schemes were well-applied. 30+ years later, I still have all of them in my fleet, now in their 4th or 5th upgrade cycle.
Rivarossi have been making HO scale cars since the early 1950s. Their best known cars date from the mid 1960s. They were good models for their time, but had truck mounted couplers. Some versions had plastic wheels and axles and all had small diameter wheels.
They are slightly overscale in height and width. In general they aren’t as good as current Bachmann and previous Bachmann Spectrum cars.
Mostly the heavweights were models of Santa Fe prototypes. The combine and diner matched ATSF prototypes, the pullman was a standard type, as was the observattion. The coaches were an exception and I don’t know their prototype.
These were all around 80 feet long but the coaches were nearer 70 feet.
There was a later series of cars dating from the late 1980s that were around 60 feet long. These were not really prototypical. There were short mail cars and combines but few if any short coaches.
If you are looking at the older cars, you would have to be prepared to fit new couplers and wheels.
Peter
While I’ve never bought one new, I have quite a few bought off the “used” table at a now long-gone hobbyshop.
I think that the detail is decent, although the wheels are undersize, and have flanges which are deeper than most HO scale wheels. I used Kadee 36" wheels to replace the original ones, but you’ll need to trim a little material off the brake shoes on the outboard ends of the trucks, in order to allow the replacement wheels to turn freely.
There have been comments from some modellers complaining about incorrect proportions of the cars’ clerestory roofs, and other minor issues, but they’re not things which bother me.
Kadee sells coupler conversion kits specifically for the Rivarossi cars, if you’re planning to use truck-mounted couplers. There’s one for the heavyweight cars with 6-wheel trucks and another for the lightweight car’s with four-wheel trucks. If your layout has fairly wide curves, you can also use body-mounted couplers.
Some Rivarossi cars come with interior details, but most of my pre-used ones didn’t. For those, I used sheet styrene to create interior walls and partitions, and added RIX/PikeStuff seats’. The seats are available in a variety of colours, with seats in blocks of six although I usually cut them apart to match each car’s window spacing, and then paint them.
The Rivarossi cars are fairly light, so I add custom-cast lead weights, usually hidden in the washrooms, but I also place them in the car’s clerestory roof when necessary.
I usually add a few details, such as grabirons and, on baggage cars, sill steps. While the cars do have some fairly decent underbody details, I usually add more details there, too. A few photos…(photos will enlarge if clicked upon)
Since my railroad is fairly short, I changed all of the Rivarossi 12-1 Pullmans into day coache
Over the last 17 years, I’ve acquired over 100 Rivarossi/IHC/AHM passenger cars which are all pretty similar. I upgraded all to McHenry truck mounted couplers, 36" or 38" Intermountain wheelsets (after removing car brake shoes), and, when necessary, extra weight using glued birdshot in nooks and crannies of model floors. After upgrades, they look good and run well on my layouts.
IMHO, mid-grade. They are decent looking although not prototypical. They are generic designs and not specific to any the prototype. They are very much underweight. They used to be sold without any interior detailing. I don’t know it they still come without interiors. Even with interiors they need additional weight to bring them up to standards. I never liked the truck mounted couplers and replaced mine with body mounts. Easy to do. I also added metal wheels. Adding diaphragms helps appearance too. As doctorwayne has shown, they can be a good starting point and can be made as detailed as you like.
I have an 8 car set. I really like them. Truck mounted couplers have their drawbacks but they facilitate running tighter curves. Just avoid reversing the consist and these cars track really well. Reversing at slow speeds is best but that is true of any model train in reality. It’s worth fitting new couplers although McHenry couplers are just no good even at the best of times imho. Also, pop the wheels out and clean up the trucks. Add a touch of oil to the points of the axles. Makes a big difference.
Mine are a transcontinental set complete, with the terminal observation car, decorated maroon livery CPR. If I didn’t like them where am I to go for CPR pre 1950’s passenger cars? Rapido made some, did they? They haven’t built any for their Royal Hudson yet. I have the Canadian stainless steel set in maroon lettering but that’s pure diesel era and comes complete with the diesels to haul it. I have the similar but much older era consist in brass, five cars. Expensive but nicely painted, including all the couplers! I fit new Kadee #148 in place of the sticky #5s.
The Rivarossi cars were cheap, run well and look just fine to me.
As for reality of the model to prototype I just bear in mind that nobody alive today can actually remember the prototype running. I was 11 when I last rode in a CN sleeper car from the very end of that era … and it was for the first time also. Pier 21 to Toronto in the dead of a Canadian winter.
I do think the IHC cars are a “bit of this bit of that” generic, b ut I have seen online lists which purport to show the exact prototype of the Rivarossi/AHM heavyweights. Those with the distinctive inset bottom sill are Santa Fe: diner, combine and maybe observations? I think Rivarossi even captured the blanked out windows of the original. I have some vague recollecction the coach was Soo Line but no longer recall why I think that. One of the baggage rpo cars and the duplex sleeper were definitely PRR. I also seem to recall that the observation car may have been a business car.
Dave Nelson
I have 3 coaches and a baggage car. They came without lights but they did have empty rows of seats. I picked up a Walthers lighting kit for each car, whick provided replacement trucks with metal wheels. I painted a lot of undecorated figures, although not Mel-quality.
They are advertised to handle 18 inch curves, and they do. They won’t handle 17 3/4 inch curves. My cars have couplers that are body mounted in extra swing boxes so they can do those curves.
I don’t use diaphragms, and they didn’t come with any.
While the models’ detailing may match nobody’s actual car, the 60 foot length certainly does - for instance, the floor plan I’m looking at right now for L&N “Mail cars 1106 to 1112 including 1114”. They were 60ft 10 1/4 inches over the end sills and 60ft 1inch interior length.
L&N Baggage car 205 was 60ft 9 1/2 inches over end sills.
A little longer is baggage dorm series 1602 - 1605 which were 70 feet 0in over end sills.
In coaches in the 70ft 0in size range is series 2395 to 2399 inclusive where are diagrammed as 60ft 4.5 in interior length, 61ft 2in over end sills, 69ft 0in over platforms, & 70ft 3 and 3/4 inches over buffers. Notes the series had 4 wheel trucks with 36 inch wheels and 5.5 by 10 inch journals. Electric lights and air conditioning with center air duct.
Coaches 2097, 2098, 2099, were similarly sized and equipped.
So there’s 8 passenger cars in the 70ft overall length range, certainly not a fleet but yet more than the odd singleton.
As some of the others have said, there are two different sets. Don’t know which one you are talking about. The first would be the set A and set B, that are full length cars of the AHM era type. There is a newer set of 4 cars that are 60’ long. I believe Chicago Northwestern prototype.
The Set A and Set B are OK cars. I own many of them. I run them both straight out of the box with their horn hook couplers, and also heavily detailed and modified to include body mounted Kadee couplers. Depending on the age the wheels might have the large wheel flanges, and can be plastic or metal. Usually the metal ones came on cars that were “iluminated”, but not always. Sometimes the metal wheels found their way on to the unlighted cars. They come with or without interiors. The interiors an be purchased separately. The “windows” are a plastic box that fits inside the car body so the windows are not flush with the outside of the car body.
The newer sets of the 60’ cars are of higher quality. The wheel flanges are not pizza cutter type. They are much more free rolling, They come with body mounted couplers out of the box (but the set I got were McHenry rather than Kadee). They have springy diaphrams on the end doors. The cars with passenger windows have interior details. The window material is inset so they are “flush” with the exterior wall of the car.
So I can’t put “high quality” on either, neither are super cheap. Either will serve your railroad well.
I got a set of the 60 footers around 20 years ago, maybe longer. They are definitely a cut above the 80 foot AHM era cars. The set consists of a coach, combine, RPO, and baggage. Mine were lettered for the Burlington but I removed that and relettered them for my fictional branchl
Thanks everyone! I just finished the purchace. I eagerly await their arrival. If anyone wants I can share some pictures but I won’t worry about it otherwise
This website has all the protype information for Riverossi cars. The HO versions were the same cars.
http://www.trainweb.org/fredatsf/
caldreamer
Depends, AHM/Rivarossi produced full-length heavyweight cars for many years, ending production around 2000. About that time, four 60’ heavyweight cars (RPO, Baggage, Combine, Coach) all based on CNW prototypes came out. They’ve been sold under several names since, including Rivarossi.
A big difference is the old cars had cast on grabirons and railings; the 60’ cars I believe required you drill tiny holes to add these as metal add-on parts.
The old AHM / Rivarossi cars didn’t have interiors, but the later Rivarossi “red box” ones from the 1990’s did. I think the 60’ cars all came with interiors.
I bought some a while ago and they have given me nothing but problems to deal with
Care to expand (or expound) on that?
Wayne
I would be interesting in knowing which cars you were getting - the 1960’s era AHM/Rivarossi 70-80’ cars, or the 2000’s era Rivarossi/Walthers/etc. 60’ cars. You never really specified which kind you were buying, so the responses were all over the place.
I am getting a four car set of 60 foot cars. One baggage, one RPO, one combine and one coach.