Just bought a Roundhouse 3 in 1 craft kit at a train show, paid $8.00, it is a 3/26’ old timer "shorty’ flat car kit, it’s an amazing kit with many differnt options to construct various cars, I’m very pleased as it’s my first Roundhouse kit- - - just when did Roundhouse quit making model kits and is there an equivalent company today making similar kits??
While I do not know exactly when Roundhouse kits went out of production, I believe Accurail is about as close to their product line as you will find today.
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I certainly enjoy Roundhouse products, even today. My most recent picture on “Show Me Something” is of a Roundhouse Gondola.
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-Kevin
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The 3 in 1 kits are an introduction to kitbashing. I made a couple of them. This is a flanger made from an old timer caboose. The kit also included a Jordan spreader and a snow crab
The basic flat car is still being made by Athearn.
Ed
I believe that Athearn (now Horizon) took over the Model DieCasting/Roundhouse line, and still offer many of their cars as r-t-r items.
Most, if not all of MDC’s line was kits, and especially, of course, the 3-in-1 kits. I doubt that Horizon would have these available in any form, though, as the whole point of the original was to make what you wanted from the parts that were included (along with whatever you had on-hand that would be appropriate, too).
I never bought any of the 3-in-1 kits, but a friend gave me left-over parts from several of them, and I used some of them to create the not-yet-weathered foundation on this coal elevator…
…the powerhouse (with the smokestack) of this factory…
…the oilhouse at my locomotive shops…
…and doors for three railroad water towers like this…
The towers are heavy cardboard tubes, originally used for rolled paper, wrapped with .005" sheet styrene, with embossed river detail. They feed either Tichy standpipes, like the one at left, below, or kitbashed ones, at right…
Wayne
In 2004 Horizon Hobbies bought Athearn and Roundhouse (also called MDC). Shortly thereafter they stopped making kits - I don’t recall the year. Accurail and Bowser make similar type kits, but do not replicate the Roundhouse line especially the pre WWI cars. In particular no one (AFAIK) makes similar passenger car or locomotive kits to what Roundhouse made.
Many of the kits can still be found at train shows under either the Roundhouse or Model Die Casting (MDC) name. However, they are getting scarcer - again especially passenger cars and locomotives.
Paul
Around here the cars you seem to find the most are the Pullman Pallace passenger car kits.
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There are no where near as many Roundhouse/MDC cars as Athearn blue box kits at train shows.
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-Kevin
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River City Railroad still sells shake the box kits. Some are unpainted Project Car kits.
I use to buy the old time cars from them some years ago.
Around early 2000’s I recall seeing a posting somewhere about them buying up old MDC stock.
It might have been in the Yahoo Groups, Early Rail Group.
I suspect they might have a company in China making the kits today. Thet rarely run out of some stock.
Rich
I model the year 1910, so I own a lot of the Roundhouse/MDC 36 foot Old-Timers. I’ve found I can buy as many as I can carry for $5 or less per copy at local train shows. Love those older ones with the metal chassis, they are just right for the NMRA car weight recommendation, and are a great platform for scratchbuilding. I’m not a fan of the newer plastic chassis.
I upgrade the kits by using monofilement fishing line for the truss rods (looks like metal and is stronger than the thread), sometimes adding scale turnbuckles (not all truss rod cars had them) and adding Kaydee couplers, metal wheels, sometimes on different truck styles.
My pet peeve is the cast-on grab irons, not much you can do about them without re-painting the car. Back in the day, they came with separate grabs, and I have a few of those, but they are a rare find now-a-days.
Jim
I love them too. I buy them as I find them even though HO is not my primary scale.
Paul
In the late 70’s they made kits with individual grabs, thr grabs were just staples but with the pre-drilled hole you could use anybodys grabs. Properly done up kits looks pretty close to todays stuff, used A-line stirrups on mine and grant line turnbuckles.
I don’t recall ever seeing those cars, but in the ‘70s, I was buying their modern (at that time) boxcars.
I do recall the cast metal cars (one such gondola still in service on my layout) and the plastic 36’-ers with moulded-on grabirons. As I recall, those use 22" grabs, and I simply make my own, as I have few of those cars -wouldn’t mind more, but don’t see them too often, even at train shows.
Wayne
Hi tatans:
I love the old Roundhouse 3 in 1 kits. I have built several of them and they can be made into fine models, and many of them are rather unusual too. It’s too bad they were discontinued.
I get the impression that some of the respondants to your thread don’t actually know what a ‘3 in 1’ kit consisted of. We are not talking about a simple passenger car, freight car or caboose ‘shake the box’ kit. The 3 in 1 kits supplied you with some very basic components that could be built into three models per kit. However, there was a lot of scratchbuilding and kit bashing required to get the desired end results. For example, one fire fighting tank car came with a 36’ freight car body, a 10,000 gal. tank car body and a metal tank car frame. To build the fire fighting car you had to cut the freight car and tank car bodies into several pieces, sandwich various parts together, and then add in your own styrene panels and platforms to complete the model. For the snow removal equipment, the modeller was required to form their own snow blades out of styrene or brass. You could add on as many details as your heart desired, but you had to make most of them yourself.
If you see one at a swap meet I strongly suggest that you grab it. Some of the kits aren’t quite as interesting like the logging car kits, but others like the Jordan spreader kit or the snow crab kit are a lot of fun!
Dave
When I got back into the hobby after 20 years, I discovered the 3 in 1 kits. I am thankful for them, as they steered me into scratchbuilding. As has been noted, the kits included various parts and pieces from the Roundhouse line, but it was their instructions that were the most valuable to me. Most included templates for the required additions in styrene and Plastruct pieces. Their materials lists were invaluable to me as I didn’t have any of the required material on hand. I just brought the list with me to various hobby shops until I acquired the items I needed.
I used their plans to make the bucket, boom, boom turntable, etc. in the steam shovel kit as well as the Jordan spreader, snow dozer, snow crab, etc., learning all the time. They often included prototype photos, which were a great help to me as I didn’t have any reference materials and of course this was before the Internet.
I think I’ve made most of the 3 in 1 kits, and kept on buying them wherever I could find them just to have their kit parts.
Sure glad I discovered the kits!
I think it’s unlikely a hobby shop has a manufacturer in China making fake MDC / Roundhouse kits for them to sell today. More than likely they just have a lot of old stock they’ve accumulated. Athearn still makes many of the old MDC/Roundhouse cars under the Roundhouse or the “Ready To Roll” brand name. I’m sure their lawyers would be on someone making and selling fake ones in a second.
IIRC Roundhouse kits originally were metal kits going back to the 1940’s or 50’s. At some point they switched to plastic bodies, maybe in the 1960’s? Anyway, cars like the two kinds of Michigan ore cars, 36’ boxcar, reefer, and stockcar, wood and steel cabooses, etc. were in production for many decades, and I’m sure many unbuilt kits are still out there.
I have never seen unpainted project cars sold by MDC or Athearn.
Maybe they have a deal going with Athearn.
There must have been a considerable supply of old MDC stock when the company was sold.
It is going on about seventeen years now.
Once I ordered the MDC steamer boilers.
A few months ago some new items were popping up that I had not seen about four years ago.
I emailed them out of curiosity but never got an answer.
Rich
I built a Climax A based on one (or two!) of those kits that included the short flat car (see my avatar). These kits were awesome and included tons of spare parts that are great for other scratchbuilding or superdetailing projects. I still have a few kits on my “to-do” shelf. But I wonder what will happen when the used market totally runs out of these. I just can’t see myself buying RTR items and just watch them run on my pike.
Simon
If you mean undecorated kits, MDC produced thousands and thousands of them over the years. Before maybe the 1990’s, most model manufacturers decorating of cars wasn’t very good. Many ‘serious’ modellers preferred to buy undec kits and paint and decal them so they looked better and were more prototypically decorated. Clover House dry transfer co. used to carry MDC undec. car kits in their catalogue, so you could order lettering sets and the cars to put them on all at one time.
I don’t know offhand if Athearn produced undec Roundhouse kits after buying out Model Die Casting, but even if they didn’t, there must still be thousands of old MDC (and Athearn) undec kits out there.
I would say again that I think the odds that Athearn agreed to have former MDC undecorated kits made in China and then shipped to one hobby shop and no one else in some sort of secret deal to be pretty small. Simpler answer is just that your hobby shop has a sizeable stock of old undec kits on hand.
Horizon hobbies does offer the old MDC/Roundhouse cars as RTR models now, but the old 3 n 1 kits will probably never happen again. I watch for the logging versions at train shows to purchase. Like most kits here in the USA they have gone the way fo the Dodo bird and train shows with estate tables of trains for sale is your best bet.(those are my favorite tables to flock to when I arrive at a show!!). I grew up to late, as pretty much everything new on the market is of little interest to me. I prefer older kits, craftsman and shake the box style, old early brass import steam engines and I even plan to use some true scale roadbed track on my layout once I get started. That is what I grew up wanting in the magazines, and what I enjoyed at the large local club that I was a member of. That layout was started the year I was born (1973) and recycled many items from the previous layout that predated me by many years. Mike the Aspie
IIRC, the remaining stock from Roundhouse/MDC was acquired by this firm. Basically, it was all the spare parts, left overs from past runs, and other unpackaged stuff in the warehouse. Horizon wanted to deal only with sellable stock, not put together more kits when they bought MDC’s asset’s. That would account for undec items that otherwise would’ve only been found decorated. The parts that were then available were sometimes packaged as complete kits, depending on what was in the mix…