Tankers have a long service life so almost anything would do; the Atlas 17K or 23K would be great but maybe too pricey.
i would be interested in trying to design something, just check out my web site, and you will see sounds like a good idea overall.
I'm not much on specialty cars. But this one might just be interesting. A tanker? There's a car body style that's often overlooked! Boxcab E50
A down payment of 50% will be required by just about any company that makes the car, so someone will have to collect money in advance.
Can we maybe get a company that would do both N scale and HO, like Atlas, Athearn or Kato? I didn't realize this was for N scale only? Or do us HO scalers have to make our own? lol
Hey Matt, if you get 250 HO scalers, then we can piggyback our 50 and maybe we can make up an order... right?
hmm, lemme see what i can do I have plenty of friends around here, that may be interested. What is the minimum we can have before we place an order?
Chuck has a good point, someone will need to collect $$ OR float the project. I was able to float my atlas forum car and the VARR car at the same time, but it is a lot of money. And don't forget to include the shipping cost from the manufacturer to the person shipping them out to everyone in the unit cost. I am handling shipping out the VARR car myself, and it takes a bit of time (definitely use the usps.gov online label service!). My forum and other custom run cars coming up I am not, fortunately Chuck at FRTS is handling them for me - he is all set up to do it and can take online orders for them, and can accept credit cards - which people really like. Most asked if I could take charge cards and online ordering for the VARR cars, but I have no way to do either, hence the deal with Feather River. There is also lead time - Bowser was 4-5 weeks and it took 6, Atlas is about three months and the car you want has to be coming up in their schedule. William, I would be happy to share my experiences so far and what I have learned about all of this offline, just email me. All in all, doing custom run cars has been super fun, very interesting, and I have emailed with a LOT of fellow forumites from here, the railwire and the big board. Already have two more cars planned for the fall!
I'm wondering wether a decal set would be easier, it could be run in N and HO, and could be applied to whatever cars you wanted, or maybe used on billboards, road vehicles, etc... What about www.trainboard.com graffiti for modern modellers to add to (model) freightcars of their choice? Microscale do short run deals on using up the remnants from their main prints, which would let you include white lettering, and make it a relatively short run. Decal sheets ought to be cheaper to post as well, and it would be interesting seeing how different folk used their decals.
A quality decal set makes very good sense. At some point we could have a thread, like SNFF, to post photos.
"2. Once we've agreed on the type of car, the next issue will be the design. The Atlas car was simply done by one guy and then offered around. Same with the VARR hopper. A committee design probably won't work. " I think trying to get everyone to agree on a forum like this would take forever. Two, three or four people should work off-line, decide on the design, and even possibly the type of car, and tell the group what it will be. This is how the Altas car was done, and I don't remember any "it should have been.." emails.
I like the decal idea. But I would love to see a TB car as an Intermountain PS-2 4750 hopper. I LOVE those. Th ACF 4650's aren't bed, either. Just no kits! I run lots of grain trains, and a TB car randomly inserted would be a subtle attention getter....
I would prefer, IMO, a car available to buy. The touring forum car doing the rounds would be cool, but I hate to infringe on Atlas forum car territory... Covered hoppers come in so many colorful schemes, and we could have a choice in manufacturers. I like Intermountain cars, but the price is somewhat steep. Red Caboose is good quality, but cheaper. Could we get a a blank line drawing of a PS-2 4750 or 4650 ACF hopper, to practice on?
Ya know, I also like the idea of the decal sheets. I think they would be cheaper, and we can maybe have a lil more variety. Maybe I'll search around today at different mfr's websites and see if they say anything about doing limited run cars or whatever.
I found a list of HO scale special run cars that Intermountain has done: http://www.intermountain-railway.com/ho/sr/hosr.htm And an N scale... http://www.intermountain-railway.com/n/sr/nsr.htm
I like the idea of the train board decal sheet. Then we can all be creative and make our own train board locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, cabooses, billboards, saloons, etc..... We can start a post and see what people come up with.
Count me in for the decals! I loved the Model Railroader issue that came with the Turtle Creek decals and I believe that it was a big hit. It would be interesting to see just how many different pieces they would be applied to. And, yes, I would be willing to pay for them! Russ
