What freight car (that would sell in numbers) should the manufacturers go for next?
Specifically … 1980s… used by several roads… seen over much of USA (and neighbours).
I’d like to see a wider variety of tank cars
Bit more specialised I’d like to see some 4 axle centre depressed cars.
Eastern Car Works makes a 4 axle, depressed center flat car. I forgot, its a kit, nobody can make kits anymore, or paint and decal.
Favorite car is the offset door FGE 50’ RBL owned by FGE and several railroads.
Rick
Well, I want some quailty mechanical refrigerated box’s. Also some Michigan type ore cars. Also, thank you Walthers for the three-bay Bethlehem hoppers but how about more paint schemes and some four-bay cars.
I PREFER Kits… I can weather in-under and behind handrails, hopper ends and anywhere else that gets buried before I put it together… but WHERE DO I GET THE ECW centre depressed?
…ok, that’s solved that one…how about a six axle (two truck) centre depreseed?
I’ve also seen six axle tank cars… don’t know when/where they ran or what they carried… looked good though…
David
Sorry if I hit the wrong button, by the majority of posters only want RTR, and I only build kits, preferably undecorated. As for the ECW kits, thry Model Railway Post Office, MRPO, they have always had a good supply of their kits in stock when i wanted them.
Rick
I prefer undecorated kits myself. I model primarily passenger cars and quite a few start out as nothing more than sides and and a core kit. Thank goodness for Train Station Products. And as far as where to get the flat, check out the link below. I don’t know if it is the cheapest, but it is a good start.
By the way the ECW depresed center car is one that was built in the 40’s or 50’s. While they survived to the 1980’s , its not a ‘1980’s’ era car.
Dave H.
Thanks for help… didn’t wind me up … I usually go on about not wanting RTR… I like to weather my hoppers in under the open ends… no-one cleans in there… so it should be crud bound. I also find that where steps are solid… as on Athern cars… just touching the outside edge with dark grey/black acrylic artisit paint using a hard bristled fan gives a pretty good impression of a seperate step/rung when a car goes by… well sed steps don’t retain their paint/stay clean.
As for car life, well cars (sorry - centre depressed cars) at least are pretty special and I wouldn’t expect to run high mileages - unlike maxgons for example - so I imagine that they are pretty long lived.
I like Mech Reef’s myself, but in the 1980s weren’t they mostly 1960s (and early 1970s) leftovers, usually in their original paint. Were there any new Reefers made in the 1980s (I realize some got repainted, particularly after PFE was split up between UP and SP)
Now, in the 1990s, not only did they start manufacturing new reefers (including the rather big Cyro-gens…hmmm those aren’t so mechanical, are they?), but also they began rebuilding much of the old stock (including new external refrigeration units, or new internal units but with the roof section over the refrigertaion compartment removed).
Meaning several new mech reef configurations…
Didn’t the ARMN rebuilds start in the 2000s? UP did start rebuilding it reefer fleet (a different rebuild than the ARMN rebuild) in 1989. If you find a UPFE 461000 series reefer, you will find a 1989 rebuild date on the consolidation stencil.
I don’t think that the question is limited to cars built in the 1980s, it looks to me that it can be any car in use in the 1980s. I would like to see the FGE built reefers, and the PFE/SPFE/UPFE classes R-70-17 through R-70-19 and R-70-21 through R-70-25, and maybe better versions of the R-70-16 and R-70-20 than are currently available.
I would like to see an open centerbeam done in the quality of Genesis, Intermountain, Atlas
or P2K. The Walther’s one is weak on detail and peformance. The only 72’ ones still around are the McKean, way to much work is involved to make them into a decent car. After doing 8 of these to add to the roster, I’m done, if you worked on one you know how troublesome and poor the kit can be.
Bob K.
A car that has been missing in Action is the Thrall 60’ Auto Parts Car, all the other manufacturers are covered - Greenvile, PS, and ACF.
Also, a correct 86’ Hi-Cube besides the Walthers correct PS. The Athearn is a compromise between the Thrall and Greenville car, we need accurate Greenville and Thrall cars.
Rick
If I were modeling the 1980’s (I am modeling the 1950’s), I think I would want a better selection of oil tankers. What I would desire would be a six pack or twelve pack that would prevent me from having to renumber so many of them. Athearn and Walther’s have done this with hoppers, ore cars, reefers and the like, but I’ve never seen this done with tank cars. The '80’s train that I would be attempting to recreate would be the oil train that used to run from Bakersfield to Mojave, CA. (Of course that’s one I remember frequently watching in operation). The other train that I used to enjoy watching in operation was the sugar beet train in the San Joaquin Valley in the '70’s and '80’s. I know Red Caboose did a run of these cars, but at the prices they wanted for them, I couldn’t afford more than a few. The trains I remember had dozens of cars in them, so I’d want at least one dozen! Those were the unit trains I remember from my earlier years, so I think that is what I’d want to model (if I were doing the '80’s).
The original Oil Cans ran from Bakersfield to Carson, then from Mojave to Carson, this train no longer exists. There is one currently that runs from south of San Ardo (Wunpost) to Carson (although the refinery is in Torrance). By the way, the MDC Tank Train tankcar is not an accurate model of the real things. Of course this is not as bad as what I have seen in N scale. I have seen pictures of ACF whalebelly pressure cars painted in one of the Oil Can schemes and being ran as a unit train.
It would be nice to have some Trinity Rail Group built tankcars besides the corn syrup cars.