I just did a google search for Walthers Proto 2000 Wheel Sets. I’ve also looked through the inventories of both Walthers and Model Trains Stuff and it appears the P2K line of wheel sets has been discontinued. Walthers offers Cornerstone wheels which are no where as detailed as the P2K wheels.
Unless I hear otherwise, I guess the 600 or so P2K wheel sets I’ve purchased over the last 15 years wasn’t enough to keep a great product from being phased out! I probably only need another 10 packages of 12 wheel each to complete my inventory of rolling stock, too.
Now under the name WathersProto, 33" ribbed item #920-21259, 33" flat back 920-21258, 36" flat 920-21257. All three currently o/s at Walthers. They are listed, strangely, under the Couplers & Trucks category… But, still manufacturing them at least. [8D]
When I do a search, the only Walthers Proto item that shows up in a search at Couplers/Thrucks-Wheels are geared wheel sets for Proto 2000 E-6,7,8 and 9 locomotives.
However, now I see that if I go into Trucks, there they show up. I wonder if Walthers forgot to remove this link?
I have purchased almost all of my P2K wheel sets from Model Trains stuff and they no longer show the ribbed back wheel sets.
I have sent a query to Walthers asking what’s up with the P2K wheel sets.
An eBay serch for “proto wheels” turned up 2 listings for 33" ribbed back wheels. One listing is a shop in Florida, offering 12/$10.75 with free shipping. He may have other styles in stock as well. I’ve delt with this seller in the past and have always been pleased.
I bought lots of P2K wheelsets for $3.99 each at M B Klein(Modeltrainstuff) years ago. When the price went up, I switched to I-M wheelsets. No plastic axle tips, and just as good or better rolling ability. You can buy the 100 count ‘bulk packs’ on-line for around $70, including free shipping. That is $.70/axle - Beats the Walthers price!
Keep in mind that in the last year and half Walthers has rationalized and re branded their various lines of trains and I suspect Proto is now reserved for rolling stock, not necessarily stuff they inherited from LifeLike that LifeLike branded as Proto 2000 or whatever. So searching for the word Proto in the Walthers online catalog won’t find items that were Proto but aren’t any longer.
I’m having a hard time following what your saying here, Dave!
I have looked through both Model Trains Stuff’s and Walthers’s complete inventory of wheel sets and trucks and did not see any of what I’m after. In fact Walthers trucks appear to have their Cornerstone wheel sets in them now.
I thinksomeone at Walthers screwed up. If you look at the links provided by maxman above, the items are listed under “trucks”, not “wheels”. Maybe that’s why you didn’t find them.
I can’t speak to the way that Walthers hides them. But when I use that site, I always find it easiest to search if I have the part number (for example 920-21258). And if I’m using the advanced search function, I always make sure that I check the “show all items, regardless of availability” and “include discontinued out of stock products” boxes.
Like I said to Dave above, I went through the entire inventory at both venders. I was confused (still am) about the status of these wheel sets.
I’ve also said I sent a query to Walthers about the these wheel sets. A month or so back I bought some packages of the ribbed backs from Model Trains Stuff. I bought out what they had on hand. I hate to spend full price on anything I buy for the model railroad. So my biggest concern is that Model Trains Stuff has dropped these wheels from their inventory. If this is only temporary, I can’t say.
I can certainly buy another manufacturers products and may indeed do so!
While Walthers tries to figure out what they will produce and what they won’t, I am going to go with some Reboxx wheel sets. I’ve never bought anything from this manufacturer; however, I’ve been impressed by the fact that they seem to understand wheel sets enough to know they need to have different axle lengths! While the P2K wheel sets I’ve bought always seemed to work at an axle length of 1.012 long. I know for a fact that sometimes this length seems a tad short of the truck I was going to install them in.
So, I’ll give Reboxx a try. Did you know that Reboxx supplies axle lenths between .965 and 1.075?, meaning there can be as much as .110 difference in the distance between bearing surfaces?
It sounds like you have decided to go with a different type of wheels, and that’s fine. But you DIDN’T go through Walther’s entire inventory. They are there. Maxman provided the links.
Now, granted, they are not in stock with an “Unknown” date for the restock, but when Walthers discontinues a product, that’s what the status says, so I must assume that this is a temporary production disruption, not a permanent change.
Reboxx wheels are, IIRC, custom Intermountains. So if most of your equipment uses the ‘standard’ size, you can probbaly save some momney using IM wheels, saving the special Reboxx ones for those cars that need special sizes. I’ve used them a few times, and when you need them, they are great. Even once reported to them a mistake in their charts, when I bought a pack of the recommended size for a particular model and they were way too long - longer than P2K, when the car in question needed shorter than P2k. Since then I just use my caliper to measure and order by size, though they did edit their chart. I do use their truck tuner tool on all my rolling stock - definitely helps things. I also have the same tool from Micro Mark, but it is way shorter - too short to work in Athearn and Accurail trucks.
Hopefully the P2K wheelset situation is temporary, they’ve served me well over the years. That $3.99 price from Klein’s before Walthers bought LL made it cheap to make sure every car had metal wheels. I have considered switching to Intermountain since the club gets a discount on 100 packs through a LHS, and the Intermountain are easier to install resistors fro block detection. For now though I do have a decent inventory of P2K to finish off most of the car kits I have waiting to build. I’m not going to mass change out and remove P2K and replace them, they work perfectly fine.
I agree Randy, my P2K wheelsets have worked wonderfully for me. My problem is I need wheels now, so I’m unwilling to wait to see what Walthers is going to do!
Yes, Maxman did show me that the P2K wheel sets where not listed under Wheel Sets (where I expected I should find them); but, were instead located under Trucks, which is a place I would not of considered I’d find Wheel Sets.
You can certainly ASSUME the status of P2K Wheel Sets to be whatever you want! That is yo
I just recently purchased wheels from Reboxx; 33" with a .965" axle to replace the ‘pizza cutter’ ones on my Rivarossi Berkshire tender. They are a very high quality wheel set (whoever makes them?) and I will use them (Reboxx) again when I need specific axle lengths. Also, having metal axles as well, they are perfect for power pickup, which I needed on the tender. I believe they were $12 for 12 axles and I still have 6 left.