Last night, at the club (BSME.org), one of the guys brought in his new HO Walther’s Empire Builder passenger set. Please understand that these cars were brand new, right-out-of-the box items. He set it up behind a nice set of Proto GN A-B-A F7’s. It must have been about 14 ft long.
As I have seen many previous versions of Walther’s passenger cars have trouble with our layout, I was prepared for a disaster, standing by with a crying towel and condolences for him. To my absolute amazement, it ran perfectly around our mostly 32" radius curves and the 3 powered and sound equipped engines sounded outstanding and pulled like champs. He had trouble with only one coupler on one car, and no detectable problems with the diaphrams. It traveled around about 6 times on our 150 ft mainline with no disasters.
Was this just a fluke, or have you also had good experience with these new HO passenger cars from Walther’s? Have we finally advanced to the point that an out-of-the-box passenger car will actually stay on the track? Have the Chinese secretly figured out how to do this?
Fluke? I don’t know, but it certainly doesn’t mirror my experience. I had a big operating session coming up and my sets came the day before. I started my normal re-work of the cars giving them Kadee couplers, checking the wheel gauge and truck rock factor, and finally lubricating the trucks. Unfortunately I ran out of time with only four cars done. Since I hadn’t found any problems thus far I thought I’ll take them and give them a try. I set up a full train (15 cars) and immediately started having problems. The first was that the semi-scale couplers wouldn’t connect. This was on straight flat track. When it seemed the thing was finally connected, at the first grade it came apart three times. Upon inspection the hooks on the great dome were only aligned with the adjacent cars by about 1/2 the hook. So the tinyest bump in the track would decouple them. Another short distance and all the other three domes came out for the same reason. Once the uncoupling problem was solved the derailing started. At first I attributed it to bad track and just put them back on. Hmmmm, I noticed it was the same two cars causing the problems derailing themselves and the car next to them so I took them out of the train. Seems the trucks don’t rock enough. So now the train is down to 9 cars (four of which are the ones convertd to Kadee) and I was able to run the rest of the evening with no problems. So that would make 5 out of 1
Sorry Sue, no photos were taken. I did convince him to bring it to our next open house on August 11th. Maybe we can get some video shots then. I will try to get my NP NCL running as a little competition for him.
Gandy Dancer,
Very interesting. It turns out, that the member who brought the Empire Builder. does not like the looks of the full sized dome cars, so he excluded them from his train. He did not have to deal with any coupler problems. As I recall, they were all at the same height, but I did not check closely since everything was running so smoothly.
Walthers states that the F7’s are “the most authentic GN Empire Builder F7 available”.
They have silver trucks and tanks. I have yet to find any illustration or photograph of the prototype Empire Builder with silver tanks or trucks. Does anyone know why they are silver instead of the usual black?
Hmmm Interesting observation. I just made a quick look through my books, and found two photos of locos on the Empire Builder with silver trucks and tanks (Great Northern Pictorial Volume #3, by John Strauss Jr. pages 125 & 147). The one photo is an ABBA set and the other is an ABA. The locos I can see the numbers on are 361A (in the p125 photo), 361C, 352B, 355C (in the p147 photo). The C units do not have snowplows.
Thanks. I just couldn’t find any pictures of anything other than the plain black tank/trucks, and I’m sure they didn’t just pull the idea out of thier “imagination”.
A GN fan might have more detailed info, but it seems GN went to silver underbodies on psgr (only) units sometime around the mid to late 50s and then reverted to black. It might have been some kind on AAR “recomended practice” as the UP and NYC also did it.
I think it was pure and simple economics. Maintaining silver paint on locomotives is expensive especially when it is only a few among most others having black. Plus black doesn’t show dirt as much so they take less “cleaning”. Take the example of the Santa Fe, who kept the silver trucks. They ended up putting fresh silver paint on the trucks at the beginning of each transcon run of the Superchief and El Capitan. Not cheap, but then they couldn’t let the SuperChief even have a hint of not being 1st class all the way.
Yup, couldn’t have the flag ship of the company looking weathered or shabby. There was a reason that Hollywood rode the Super Chief.
But the real reason for my post is an update. I finally worked through my entire 17 car Orange & Green Empire builder set. Replacing the couplers, checking the wheel gauge, making certain the trucks had a little rock to them, and lubricating the axles. With their new Kadee #5 (no reason for semi-scale #58s because the couplers are hidden from view), I took them to an operating session last night. Ran all night long without a single derailment or coupler issue.
Another one of our club members showed up with his new Walther’s Empire Builder and right out of the boxes, his somewhat shorter version of the Builder, ran perfectly. There was no full length dome car on his train. Running on our layout now are three EB consists: ABBA, ABA, and an AB.
In many photos, especially in the later period of Santa Fe passenger trains, you could see silver overspray on red warbonnets. Below are some links to photos that show silver overspray:
The passenger cars also got the silver paint before each run. Here’s a photo that shows just how clean the passenger cars were, even at this late 1971 date. Look closely at the rear and you’ll notice there’s silver overspray there too:
Thats really cool! I guess they started to get sloppy later on.
Rio Grande flirted with silver trucks around 61-64 time frame but reverted back to black. I have no idea if they did repeated sprayings like Santa Fe or even now and then repaintings.
That is why I chuckle when people ask how to “weather” Santa Fe passenger cars. Even the branch line cars (red color rather than mainline green) were spotless on the outside.
I am running a 10 car set representing the 51 Builder. Motive power is my P2K E7s, or my Athearn Genesis F7s.
They did NOT run flawlessly out of the box, mostly due to the crap they put on for couplers. Given the length of the cars, I did the same thing I do with every car I have, I put on good old reliable #5 Kadees. I am not a fan of the #58s, any slight dip I have in my trackwork, the 85 ft. cars find it, and uncouple.
The cars also needed a good lube job on the truck journals. After those tune ups, they are running around just fine, looking great.
They put my Key Limited '47 Builder to shame.
The only thing I wish they would do is place all the grabs and side stirrups on the cars. Drilling out and assembling the grabs and side stirrups is a PITA. I would have gladly paid an extra $10.00 per car to get that done from the factory. I still have 7 cars to complete the details on.
Now, if they could just be talked into doing a '48 North Coast Limited.[:)]
