Hello everyone. Hope you all had a nice Christmas. I was out running trains earlier this evening and started looking over my rolling stock collection just to see what the majority of makers were and as it turned out about 40% of them are Microtrain, 40% are Atlas and the rest are Con-Cor, Life Like, Model Power and a few other odd brands here and there. I find that I run the Microtrain and Atlas the most as far as freight goes but most of my passenger cars are Con-Cor. What’s so dumb on my part is that I keep buying “lower end” cars but never use them…
My roster consists of 90% Red Caboose with the rest made up of Intermountain, Tichy, and a couple of others. There are also a few Athearn and MDC cars. All were kits that I built.
25% are stock paint schemes, 75% are painted and lettered with Westerfiled and Art Griffin decals.
The 3 completed cars in the front and the 2 under construction cars in the back all started life as Varney/Life Like twin hoppers like the RDG 80324 in the back.
The majority would be Accurail: ~40%. After that would be (in no particular order): Intermountain, Branchline, Proto 1000/2000, Red Caboose, Atlas, Athearn, Bowser, MTH, Exactrail, Fox Valley, BLI, Gloor Craft, Waterlevel Route, and OMI.
I think I am typical of anyone who has been in HO for a while. Started out with mostly Athearn and MDC and then graduated to Accurail, Walthers, and Bowser. From there I progressed to P2K and then R/C and Branchline since I am in no hurry now what with the layout being heavily populated and all.
Diesel motive power, for years, has been and remains mostly Atlas and Kato.
The majority of my rolling stock end up split between Bowser and P2K as a few hundred hoppers for those B&O and Chessie coal drags tend to overpower the rest of the roster in numbers alone. The remaining freight are Athearn RTR, Atlas, Walther’s, MDC Roundhouse and Intermountain. Most of my BB stock has been sold off or retired (replaced w/ newer more detailed pieces).
Never ever thought of it in those terms before, guess I was just to busy to worry about it.
Its an entire smattering of almost every make, Athearn BB & Genesis, Atlas, Bachmann, BevBel, Bowser, Branchline, ConCor, Kadee, Proto 2000, Quality Craft, Rapido, Rivarossi, Tyco, Walthers and possibly a few others unnamed. [:S]
My biggest single has to be Walthers, but that is only because of my insane amount of Trinity cement hoppers (over 40) and a few 6 packs of Quad hoppers for coal. But pecentages?? [:O] Your asking me??[:O]
ON my 1950s roster, more than 50% are Athearn BB, followed by Roundhouse, Mantua, Branchline, Walthers, Bowser, and a few others
My 1980s roster also starts with Athearn BB, followed by Roundhouse, Walthers, club cars by the Eastern Maine Model RR club (Athearn, Con-Cor, Branchline,E&C and MDC), and a few others
Like many of the responders, I have a majority of Athearn cars, mixed in with plenty of Model Power, Intermountain and Atlas as well. As I tend to acquire rolling stock from swap meets, my inventory reflects what is available there, as opposed to NIB offering advertised on MR or MRH.
My budget is geared to economical purchases, and many of the NIB offerings show up soon enough at the swap meets, so I win there as well!
Looking at Steve’s list above, I’ll be able to add True Line Trains to my inventory list when they release their NYC 19000-series wood cabooses in HO next year. [tup]
I’ve got an Excel spreadsheet, but the manufacturer column isn’t filled in for at least a quarter of the cars.
But, I can still make an extimate for my HO railroad. I’ve got lots of Athearn, Walthers, Accurail and only 1 Atlas, along with a smattering of Intermountain, Bowser and Tichy. There are a lot of old Tyco and Crown cars that I’ve had since I was a kid, which I’ve upgraded with Kadees and metal wheels, and trucks where necessary.
I’ve also got a handful of Milwaukee box cars from Ribside Cars, the company that has a small ad in the back pages of MR every month. Thanks to a conscious effort to acquire Milwaukee rolling stock, that’s the single largest road in my inventory. Box cars are the predominant car type, particularly if you lump the ice-bunker reefers in with them. It would appear that my favorite color is “oxide.”
