Have seen some Hoppers that sells under Whalters name. what quality has this car equale to Atlas? better or worst. Beside Mehano ist any more brands I should aviod? Will be happy for help. Living in Sweden and buying most of my things thru Internet its not easy to spot and aviod the traps. Mvh Kjell [ 14 April 2002, 08:06: Message edited by: vectra222 ]
Hello, I have some Walthers cars, and while they are not as good as Atlas ones, when fitted with Microtrains trucks and couplers they perform well. Same thing can be said for some bachmann cars, it is the trucks and couplers which dictate good running. Detail on newer Atlas cars is excellent. Other good makes are red caboose, Deluxe Innovations, Intermountain, etc.
Am in complete agreement with Alan. In fact, about 99% of my roster is comprised of those makes he listed above. I rarely ever buy other brands. The price is well worth while for the high quality item that you receive. BoxcabE50
Ditto to everything said above, except to say that the Walthers cars I've encountered were REALLY underweight. Good wheelsets are paramount, but proper weight helps those M-T's to stay on track. If you use Walthers intermodal equipment, adding weight to the containers makes a WORLD of difference in the way they run. Also, watch for weight differences between kits vs RTR (I'm not knocking Inter-Mountain, just seems that the RTR's are just that, the kits I've done needed a smidge of weight...could just be a bad production lot!!). One last thing about Walthers hoppers... they seem to be WAY overpriced on ebaY.. when they approach the price of a Atlas or I-M hopper, I back off and look elsewhere. Ed Dillard
Yes, I recently tried my first Deluxe Innovations - very decent quality, weighted well, and priced right - I have been happy with those - I also picked up some Red Caboose coil car kits - I like them, but they turned out to be much more difficult to put together than I expected - next time I'll get the r-t-r. I haven't tried the Intermountains - to me they don't seem as nice as Microtrains, plus you have to put them together and they are generally more expensive than MT as well. Can't go wrong with Atlas rolling stock. Check out Concor's website Grand central station in cyberspace - they had some Deluxe Innovations cars on sale for 40% off in their "Yard Sale". [ 14 April 2002, 16:43: Message edited by: ajb ]
Hi folks I can really recommend the Intermountain cars. Currently I own 65 of their hoppers. Some were kits, some ready-to-run. Replace the wheels with Micro-Trains trucks and they roll perfect. Also if you decide to take the kits make sure to proper weight them (around 32grams). I recently bought a 49-car set from LBF. WOW ! One of my SD90 managed to pull 42 of these cars up a curved 3% grade. Never saw such free rolling cars. Also I call some Mictro-Trains, Deluxe Innovations, Roundhouse, Atlas, Red Caboose cars my own. Should be around 850 cars by now....... Ranking : 1. MicroTrains 2. Intermountain 3. LBF 4. Deluxe Innovations 5. Atlas 6. Roundhouse
I have to agree with Alan on this one. Virtually any car once properly weighted and fitted with MT trucks and couplers become a great runner. The unfortuante thing here is that often this retrofit brings the cost of a non-MT car up to or more than a MT car. This certainly levels the playing field when it comes to buying MT cars or others that include MT couplers such as LBF cars. BTW: I am reasonably happy with the new Atlas accumate couplers. So I don't refit new Accumate equipped Atlas cars with MT trucks and couplers. [ 15 April 2002, 02:45: Message edited by: Grantha ]
I just spent the better part of this weekend putting together six Intermountain kits. The first one took quite a while, but I got faster with each kit that I built. I was willing to pay anyone the additional $5.00 to buy a ready to run model after the first one. (Intermountain doesn't have RTR Union Pacific 3 bay covered hoppers at this time.) By the time I finished the last one, however, it wasn't all that bad. Here are some pictures that I took that have one of the finished hoppers shown. Intermountain does tell you to add weight to the kits (which I did). I also used Micro-trains trucks instead of the trucks supplied by Intermountain. [ 15 April 2002, 04:30: Message edited by: upguy ]
Good point UPguy - Intermountain starts out the same or more expensive than microtrains, you have to put them together (not for beginners), add weight and change trucks, I am not sure what the benefit of going with Intermountains is
