How many smooth sided Walthers passengers cars do you own?
How many have the grab irons and car name/number decals on them?
With their list price going up with each new release its about time Wathers could offer the Broadway cars with the names or numbers printed on at the factory,like Rapido does.
Somehow they finally listened and started putting the grabs on at the factory,maybe with some feedback from this forum they might pay attention. I tried twice suggesting it through customer service and they said they would consider the idea.
I have about 60 Walthers smoothside cars and maybe another 30 or so Budd fluted cars. Only a few have the Walthers decals applied. I have had no luck getting the Walthers decals to stick to the painted car sides.I tried floor wax, gloss medium, Krylon, Glosskote, Solvaset, Micro-Sol, Micro-Set, Dullkote, copper rivets… nothing works. The decal is lying in the ballast a few days later. Walthers decal film really seems thick compared to MicroScale’s, too.
Way too flat of a paint finish. I think the cars could be glossier as in freshly washed Pullman varnish. Watch many of the films of the '40s and '50s and the car sides shine like a mirror. The decals would adhere much better to a gloss finish and if I wanted to dull them down I could apply my own matte finish after applying the decal.
The few cars I have applied names to were done using CDS Lettering dry transfers. I much prefer using dry rub-on transfers on a flat or matte finish. There needs to be more vendors of dry transfers out there. They look great compared to the decals.
As for grab-irons, I have put on about 100… that would be drilling 200 #80 holes with a pin vice and Opti-Visor and many broken drill bits.While humming… Model Railroading is FUN
I am glad that my passenger fleet is about complete because the Walthers cars are edging the $80 price range and that is getting a bit too dear for me! Yes, about 90% of my passenger fleet in un-named and has no grab irons installed! STILL, Walthers has done a great job at filling a huge void since my previous passenger fleet was mostly Rivarossi/AHM… Including a '38 Century dome car and an Empire Builder square-end obs that looks suspiciously like Mountain View!
Having factory applied car names/numbers would be great but would pose an inventory nightmare! Several times I have ordered a specific named Rapido cars only to receive a different car name. The sellers reply is, "Oh… that m
I don’t mess with the Grabs. Waste of my time I think. But I do like the decalling, and haven’t had a problem with them so far. But I also don’t own nearly asmany of them. (Nothing different, layer of Glosscote froma rattle, layer of micorset, decal soaked and slid off backing paper, layer of MicroSet, nother layer of microset, layer of dullcote from rattlecan) Still, It allows me to not worry about that car name being sold out. Plus, instead of only doing two or three car names a run, Walthers can run 20 or 30. A specifdic name might mean something to me (like, say a coach I saw in a museum, or an Amtrak I rode as my first train trip) and I’m more likely to be able to get it. I do wish though there was something I could do with all the extra road names…
With the exception of the RPO and the obs the other cars were used on over 25 PRR trains. I prefer the cars to not have names so they can be used on other trains. Would you rather sell cars for one train or 25?
Leave the pre applied decals off! It would make it much harder to find what you are after on the open market. I couldn’t imagine hunting down all the cars I needed on my 16 car passenger train.
And yes I applied grab irons to every one (except the RPO and heavyweight baggage which already have the grabs installed now) It is frustrating and I have lost a few to which I replaced with hand bent piano wire. But I’m happy with the results…for the most part.
With their price going up they are going to hit the point where people stop buying them. I have. Didn’t buy the last set because of that issue. Now when the quality gets up there to compete with the BLI CZ cars, I might think about a $54-$60 price tag.