Just got through my first five Walthers SP heavyweigths, and hell are they good! Already had them lashed behind my Spectrum Light 4-8-2 with a Hicken Tender and it really looks the part!
The close coupling is brilliant thanks to the small couplers and working diaphrams, and the car detail is brilliant - glad that I do not have to spend much time drilling holes and inserting the handrails like you have to on the Rivarossi 60’s. A quick question - I have got the SP green Rivarossi 60’s - what colour should I paint the hand rails, black, green or another colour?
Shame that we have to wait another six months for the rest of the Walthers heavyweight fleet to arrive, i.e the Solarium and Parlour Cars, but at least they are finally being produced! Would be nice if they also produced a few of the heavyweight in SP Green so I could justify another rake and a Spectrum Heavy 4-8-2!
Gotta agree with ya! Walthers has done a beautiful job on these cars.
It’s funny, I wasn’t very fond of heavyweights in the past as I’ve always been a streamliner freak, however, I’ve come to appreciate the various designs and elegant styling that were used on heavyweight cars.
A few years back and old timer told me that in riding heavyweights vs. streamliners there was no comparison. Heavyweights were also roomier.
Sure the Branchline models are good but, you try finding them this side of the pond! And on top of that I do not have the time to build them, rather just take the Walthers ones out of the box and run them straight away! I see that Blueprint do make RTR, but for $64.00, I cannot justtify that extra $20 per car (10 car rake - thats $200 - or another couple of locos!) for detail that is not seen while a train is moving!
I like may other people are happy with a ‘representation’ of a US train (in my case the SP Lark) done on a shoe string with RTR models rather than pay thousands of dollars for something 100% accurante, made out of brass that you are affraid to touch! And at the end of the day there are few peopl