I’ve been a model railroader for years, and I have watched many of our suppliers come and go. Since I am now mostly in O scale , Weaver was a major source of rolling stock. They were also user friendly. I was stunned to hear of their closure this summer; I had a long mental list for the future. . ( Don’t we all?) Now what? Atlas is substantially more expensive than Weaver was. And the quality was far closer than the price. And I have found no answer to where did the tooling for the made in USA products go. If a complete company can sink in a matter of days, with no likely lifelines apparent, how do O scalers maintain continuity? Two examples: I like the 60s coal era unit train formation, and the 1970s for grain haulage. I was acquiring NYC triple hoppers for coal and midwestern grain shippers for the 70s. The price difference was about 2 Atlas Trainman cars equals three Weavers. Nasty questions arise… am I back to relettering O cars? Hunt on Ebay? settle for short unit trains? I see coal unit trains , oil unit trains and lots of grain-- all on the BNSF every day. Nothing quite so impressive as a long coal train. Now I fear I may not get that last dozen NYC cars…(sigh) I miss Weaver. Any of you O scalers know any good answers?
Train shows are your best bet. I’m primarily in S, but dabble in O. In the last 6 months I have found an All Nation boxcar kit (no trucks) for $15, 3 Intermountain boxcar kits for $20 each, and 2 Atlas Master series boxcars (2 rail) new in box for $40 each. I also have seen Weaver cars as well, but didn’t buy any.
Thanks guys and I do lurk for bargains and stuff for my list. In many ways this is a larger size problem: How do we construst a workable and realistic car roster in a scale that is lean in rtr cars. Since I model the 60s/ 70s central Illinois, with a couple of pet railroads, I tend to plan ahead. So my 15 triple hopper 70 ton NYC train (?) would look a lot better with 10 more. I was thinking about Weavers 9 panel tripleor may be another 4 or 5 of the red offset side one. But I was not planning on getting into a new line or having to reletter. I was buying RTR whenever possible. My modeling objectives are kind of built around the idea that Weaver and Atlas will be around. In HO , there are multiple sources for specific cars. At last count, I had 56 coal hoppers , 90% with individual numbers. I 'm wondering where the tooling for those cars went? Sure would be nice if an Accurail suddenly popped up.
As a practical matter also, there aren’t too many 2 rail O dealer that show in the KC area. So, without a working manufacturer, I suspect life for many of us is going to ghet complex. Maybe I’ll have to make do…