A assumed by “contemporary” he meant the introduction of the scale model, not the prototype it represents. I was reading it to be like Fox Valley vs. Athearn Blue Box rather than 1950s era vs 2020 era.
Especially since his point #4 is about mid-century rolling stock and point #5 mentioned Athearn Yellow Box and Mantua models as a comparisson point.
I was just trying to help out.
-Kevin
He does say “contemporary” in the title, but then #4 says “mid-century freight cars”., and #5 he ask for a comparison next to yellow-box Athearns, and Mantua,
So, I dunno, maybe an answer to #7 should be something like: Does anybody want to go freight car shopping with me? because I’m not sure what I want" ?
I think he’s looking for anything from 1950 on ? [%-)]
Mike.
Red. I have a single train’s worth of steam era equipment with a B&O Pacific and she wanted to get me a good caboose.
I’m using “contemporary” as in models that are currently in production by companies that are currently in existence.
I model the 1950s, so I am asking about contemporary models of prototypes from the 1950s and earlier.
And I hope you appreciate my use of the word “contemporary” as opposed to “modern,” a term that is frequently abused on this forum. [Y]
Your post was perfectly clear. RioGrande has a tendency to post critical without reading everything for full understanding first.
I hope my shared experiences, limited as they might be, have been helpful.
Ed shared a lot about the Intermountain products. I have not bought any of their items ready to run.
Please feel free to ask any additional questions.
-Kevin
As best I can recall, I have only two r-t-r freight cars on my layout, and one of them needed some improvements (it was an older offering).
The other one was from Tangent, very nicely-done, but I did make a modification to improve the appearance of the cut-levers…
Generally, everything, high-end purchases or train show “finds”, run just fine. If they don’t, then they’re modified so that they do run well.
I’m not especially interested in mid-century stuff, as I’m modelling the late '30s, although not in an overly-rigorous manner.
I run stuff made in the '50s (upgraded somewhat) along with some very recent high-end stuff - prices range from free to $50/$60.
I prefer kits and scratchbuilt stuff to r-t-r, and most of my older rolling stock has been upgraded with better details. I’ve painted and lettered majority of my current 400-or-so freight cars, and most of the 200 more-modern ones which were sold-off were similar - improved details and better paint and lettering.
The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t have to spend bags of dough to get good rolling stock - nothing wrong with buying
I’m sorry, but this reply is way off base.
Anything produced in the recent past will run fine on basically any “code” of rail.
The stuff that isn’t going to run on smaller rail codes is the really OLD poor quality stuff with grossly oversized wheel flanges (slangily referred to as “pizza cutters”) that hits the spike heads with small rail.
Anything will run on larger rail sizes.
There’s no such thing as a “Code 100” train. The “code” is the height of the rail in 1000ths of an inch.
The depth of the wheel flange is covered by an NMRA recommended practice #25, and anything produced in the last 20 years or so will conform to it and run on any size rail.
There is such a thing as a wheel “code”, which is the width of the wheel (standard wheels have a .110" tread, “semi-scale” narrow wheels have a .088" tread). The guage between flanges is still identical though, so will still run on the same track. The narrower tread width can cause them to be more sensitive to sloppy track that is not well built to tolerances resulting in wide gauge. But if the track is properly gauged it’s not an issue. (The track gauge has to be well outside the tolerances of the NMRA RP/spec for even narrow wheels to have a problem.)
In my opinion, the .088" wheelsets may be closer to prototypical dimensions, but they lose that “advantage” when installed in the overly-wide trucks with which most rolling stock is equipped, as the trucks’ outside width is not to-scale.
I don’t use those wheelsets, so am not aware if the so-called high-end freight cars have optional truck sideframes with a more prototypical outside width to allow use of the narrower wheelsets…I doubt it. Perhaps that’s more in the realm of Proto-87.
Wayne
I agree, you are just trading one out scale feature that then makes another out of scale feature more obvious.
Not to mention how the code 88 wheelsets wobble thru most commercial turnout frogs.
Function and proportion are more important than actual scale measurements, which code 88 wheels are still not down to.
Sheldon
Chris) My appologies you had to type all that. Ofcourse there are no “Code 100” trains. I simply meant “trains meant for code 100”. Trains with large flanges of any type.
PMR