Time to finish-up those spine car and TOFC flat kits!! http://www.atlasrr.com/highlights/ntrailers.asp Russ
Those look great. It is nice to see more trailers out on the market. I hope maybe someone will do more 53' trailiers soon. The roadrailers are a little expensive. Keep up the good work Atlas
Nice paint schemes. The preferred pool should be quite popular. Good to see new schemes becoming available from Atlas. S&R Models will also have five new schemes on the 45' Interrmodal van, available this fall. Announcements soon..... Steven www.srmodeltrains.com [ 21. August 2003, 14:37: Message edited by: S&R Models ]
There is a very good supplier of spine cars in N-scale, In fact he has a link on the bottom of the page. http://www.alancurtismodels.com/ Take a look.
As much as I (and N Scale in general) want and need 45' trailers for my empire, I must admit I am a bit dissappointed in Atlas for the new roadnames on their 45' Pines trailers. I'd have much rather seen Atlas produce a new body style for the new schemes - a Stoughton 45'er. Its the 80's - 90's equivalent of a 40' boxcar - this things were everywhere and in just as many different schemes! I'm aware of how expensive modern tooling costs are and how Atlas would have had to go to the trouble of producing new drawings and research to achieve this. I would have just liked to have seen an accurate trailer to reflect these great older schemes. I'm sure Atlas will do well with these trailers, as N Scale is screaming for mass produced, well deatiled trailers - in classic schemes such as BN Intermodal, Perferred Pool, Santa Fe and SP's Golden Pig. I also find it curious that I haven't seen a single negative comment yet about the new roads. I think that says alot about the demand for modern trailers. Normally, a manufactured would be crucified on the net for painting innaccurate schemes to models.....perhaps the disclaimer that these "paint schemes are correct for 45' trailers NOT manufactured by Pines" is enough to avoid that??? As I said, I'm sure they'll sell a heap...but I think we've all missed out on a chance to have another top quality 45' trailer of a different prototype. It would have been fairly simple them to offer 48' versions as well. Hopefully this won't discourage another manufacturer from producing a prototypical trailer for these popular schemes. Having said that - will I get any? Maybe one of each of the SP numbers and one of the Preferred and BN releases as fill-ins until someone else makes a Stoughton trailer. Looks like I'll have to keep decalling MT's Fruehauff trailer (which SP, Santa Fe and Preferred Pool/Milwaukee all had and yet MT hasn't yet produced) to form the majority of my fleet. At least I'll be able to make up the numbers of my Redon and Xtra trailers. If Atlas wanted to offer a varient on their Pines trailers, they could have produced a 48' version - BNSF and JB Hunt had enough of these to keep the spine cars of many modellers filled.
James, I'll have to agree that I would have liked to seen Atlas make a 48' version of the PINES trailer and/or a different 45 footer. As long time N scalers know, we have had to make do with what is available, unless we start from scratch. Let's hope that Atlas will see the popularity of these trailers and produce some others. It's also possible that manufacturers will think that these are 'good enough' . I would give a suggestion to Atlas(Paul G.) via email. As a custom decorator we have chosen the Atlas 45' van as it is the best AVAILABLE model to produce the vast variety of 45' schemes seen on the rails. As an Intermodal modeler myself, I would rather have a variety of trailers with different schemes- even if the prototypes were different builders, than just a couple of schemes, (IMHO). But, YES, I wish and do encourage Atlas and 'others' to produce more variations of Intermodal trailers. I say " See all the potential sales you are missing out on". But, alas, it is a very expensive project - new tooling, as you have mentioned. As N scale modelers numbers grow (=more sales), we will see more and more variety. Let's let our plea for more trailer types be heard! Steven
Thanks bmalonef45. Those look like great cars. I might have to investigate farther. [ 29. August 2003, 01:21: Message edited by: Jack Doran ]
Well I definately LOVE my 48' spines from ACModels Well worth every cent!!! As for trailers, yes I'd love to see more types and lengths but as it is, I'm running alot of Con-Cor stuff so I'm just happy to have more schemes applied to the very nice Atlas trailers.
