About 6 years ago, before I retired, I bought 25 of the various Walther’s 5000 series Tank Car kits. Having worked in the “earl bizzness” for 40 years, my intent was to assemble all these different cars and put them on display.
Well, I finally got to working on them, and found two of them with broken apart ladders (that reach from the platform to the dome), and there was no fixing any of the four.
So like a good MR citizen, I emailed Walthers about some replacements. In short order I got a reply, no replacement parts are available for the 5000 series t/cs.
Other than buying a couple more kits on Ebay and cannibalizing them, I’m at a loss.
I don’t know what they ladders are like, but there are several companies that sell all kinds of ladders. You might try searching for ladder in the super detailing section of Walthers’s website.
While I was hoping to get original parts, I did make up two ladders last evening using pieces of extra Athearn ladders. They will pass.
When I bought all these kits, they immediately went on a shelf - and never messed with until I began building them. So far, I’ve found:
4 broken ladders
2 broken stirrups
1 broken brake “chain”
The cars are pretty nice, with KD couplers and Intermountain wheelsets added, plus some mild weathering. But my percentage of broken kits is running about 50 percent so far. Yes, I can repair them, but obviously would prefer intact original parts.
They are Walthers Tank Car Series 5xxx (item number), starting with 5001 going up to 502x (may go higher). They came out a good 12 years ago or so, with the early ones in the white/blue boxes (Athearn BB size) and the later ones in the red boxes that were somewhat larger.
They also put out some “3 kit” packs, which are a different item series.
The item / part / identifer number IS the 5xxx. The reason you can’t find them on Walthers website is these are wayyyyyy out of production. In example, the instruction sheet for the “Walthers single dome tank car - DOW Chemical” (which is Walthers 932**-5010**), is dated 1989! Yup, that’s almost 23 years ago.
Here’s an E-Bay site you can try. If soo-much-stuff doesn’t have them they may be able to point you in the right direction. It’s hard to browse through 59 pages of ‘stuff’ without finding something you need anyway. Good luck.
Thanks for the Ebay train connection! I’m an “old timer” on Ebay but this gathering of train stuff is new to me. Normally I look under specific parts, using all kinds of variations of words to pull up the item.
That item number helps to narrow down the search for the specific tank cars. Here is a link to the Walthers web site showing a photo of the tank car and the ladder than mobilman44 is talking about.
While there are 17 cars in the 5000 series, there were some (all???) made with different road numbers. In example, I have 3 from Humble (one of Exxon’s predecessors), and three for the ATSF. Also, Walthers put out “limited edition” three packs, of which I have the Mobil Oil and the Gulf Oil (932-9070).
I’m currently building 4 at the same time, and managed to kit bash ladder repairs and put the two broken stirrups back together (thanks to ACC).
I probably would have made some money putting these all up on Ebay, for they are asking pretty good prices for some of them.
At first, I thought of cannibalizing one car, which would give me two ladders, a frame with unbroken stirrups, and an inner frame for unbroken brake detail. But then I realized I would need to cannibalize two of them - which I just couldn’t do. I’ve still got 13 more to build, and who knows what will be amiss when I cut open the plastic seals…
Here is the list of the sixteen tank cars in the 5000 series.
932-5000 35’ 10K tank car undec
932-5001 35’ 10K tank car UTLX
932-5003 35’ 10K tank car Phillips
932-5004 35’ 10K tank car Sinclair
932-5005 35’ 10K tank car Shell
932-5007 35’ 10K Tank car GATX
932-5008 35’ 10K Tank car Humble
932-5009 35’ 10K Tank car Texaco
932-5010 35’ 10K Tank car Dow
932-5011 35’ 10K Tank car Gulf
932-5013 35’ 10K Tank Car AT&SF
932-5014 35’ 10K Tank Car SHPX
932-5015 35’ 10K Tank Car Union 76
932-5016 35’ 10K Tank Car Std Oil
932-5017 35’ 10K Tank Car Deep Rk
932-5018 35’ 10K Tank Car City Ser
If possible show some photos of them,the ones i put together did not look so great.When Walthers came out with them in RTR i sent the kit built tanks to the club.
Nope, this ol retired “senior business analyst” got the number correct!
I’m looking at the factory end label and it is as follows:
Walthers Limited Edition, 36; Gulf Tank Car, 3-Pack,932-9070, $29.98, Car Numbers: 5010, 13417 and 18786. The instruction sheet for this really nice set is also dated 1989.
The box is a long one (similar to Athearn BB passenger car box), and the cars are blue, silver, and black.
Like real railroads, Walthers probably used this number series for the newer passenger cars, knowing that the tank cars were never going to be continued.
I was searching on-line for some of those cars, and one of the links took me here. I found this one at a train show last month, for four bucks. It was in the box, but missing the trucks, ladders, placard boards, and one section of handrail, plus three of the sill steps.
After removing the factory paint, I replaced all the grabs and steps with metal parts, and added brake detail. The decals are from Black Cat, although the car still needs to be Dullcoted and then weathered.
I’m not sure who made the ladders, as they came from one of my parts drawers. They look to be cut-down ladders from a Red Caboose X-29 boxcar, but Tichy offers some Canadian-style ladders (with integral sill steps) that have almost the same rung spacing. Their part number is #3076.
There used to be a product called brass ladder stock. It was found in wood car kits and was used for the corner ladders. Looking at the model, it seems to me that one could cut sections off the length of the ladder stock to make the short sections required.
