Hey Everyone
I’m looking at getting a good size roster of trinity cars to go with my modern layout. Can anyone tell me the difference between the Atheran and Walthers cars, other than 3 cars vs 5 cars. The list price is the same at $79.99. And does anyone have any real life pics? I haven’t seen a spine car in some time.
Thanks,
CASO
Trinity makes a lot of cars, and Athearn and Walthers make several. I’m going to guess and say that you’re asking about the spine cars both make–the price and quantity that you gave fits them.
The big difference that I notice is that the detailing on the Athearn cars is far superior.
Another difference is that the Athearn cars are a later design starting production in 1998 while the Walthers cars are 1988. So, if you’re modeling 1992, your choice is obvious.
Another difference is that the Athearn car has a maximum capacity of 57’, the Walthers 48’. So, no 53’ trailers or containers on the Walthers.
The Athearn cars aren’t available yet, so a hands on comparison can’t be done–things like weight and tracking ability and such.
Photos just have to be available online. For a start, do a search for rrpicturearchives and see what they have. There are a couple of other good places that I don’t have handy.
Ed
As 7j43k previously stated, Athearn and Walthers are marketing two different spine cars. It seems the Walthers car is a re-run of their older AP Spine Car. I’m assuming that they’ve re-tooled and made some improvements to their original design. I’ll have to buy one set to find out first hand about this though. The original run of Walthers spine cars retailed $39.95, now they’re offering them at $79.95, so there better be some good improvements to the models.
The Athearn car is a new offering, they’re not out on the market yet so I don’t think anyone will have any pictures of an actual model. I do expect them to be as detailed as the Maxi I’s that are out there.
7j43k covered the differences of load capacities for each model, so no need to repeat that info.
As far as pictures, this link here has some good prototype pictures towards the bottom of the page. It shows the protoype to which Walthers based its model off of: (TTAX 76420) and there are some pictures of the prototype that Athearn is basing its model off of: (TTRX 360601).