There’s a Stewart open hopper that’s been at my local hobby shop for a while now. I recently decided to take a look at it and it has no more parts than an Athearn car kit, but it co$ts twice as much.[%-)] Why are they so much more expensive when they’re as simple as a cheap car kit?
Probably a matter of supply and demand more than anything else – Athearn kits are made by the thousands, and Stewart probably in limited quantities. Athearn is a large corporation compared to Stewart, which was a family business until it was purchased by Bowser. Stewart seemed to use slightly thinner and more detailed plastic castings than Athearn.
I have a set of 6 Stewart 3-bay hoppers. They are more difficult to assemble than Athearn or Accurail, and have more tiny parts that have to be glued on.
The Stewart cars have much finer details, buy it you"ll like it.
I’ve got a string of 20 of the triples in Rio Grande. Yes they better detailed and that is why the cost is more. How is it the old saying goes?
Whoa here guys. Much of the Athearn tooling is from the 60’s and 70’s when people worked for a lot less than recent wages. Stewart tooling is a lot more recent and cost a lot more to make. Athearn has been run hundreds of thousands of times whilke Stewarts are a lot shorter runs so less room to amortize the cost. Stewart kits are A-1 as are the ones now run by Bowser. Also the cars are a specific prototype unlike some of the Athearn stuff. It ain’t apples and apples , it ain’t even apples and oranges.