Hi All, I was wondering if anyone else received their passenger cars from Atlas recently. I just received two of them a couple of days ago. One passenger car and one observation car. Well after waiting about a year for them I have to say I'm disappointed. The cars seem too light and they derail rather easily. They are not free rolling at all. The detail however does appear very good. I don't know if I should return them or not, has anyone else experienced problems with them? Thanks Paul
Where did you get these??? I ask because apparently these cars are news to Atlas as they don't list any N scale Trainman passenger cars on their website. They do list HO Master Line passenger cars but they are not expected to ship until late 2018.
I went to the Atlas website and they do list the N scale Trainman passenger at the bottom below the freight cars.
I did not see on Atlas's site whether they are illuminated or not, or my old eyes just missed it. But the lack of rolling freely on the old Bachmann 60 footers was the axle wipers powering the lights. Also you may want to check to see if for any reason the wheels are rubbing against the underframe or even if the wheels are out of gauge. Don't know if it would be possible to replace the wheelsets with MT passenger trucks but that may be an option. As far as some extra weight a visit to your local bait and tackle store would yield some split shot in various sizes That could be applied to each end of the car and be out of sight. Tungsten Putty is another option. Nice to see the emergence of the 60 foot shorty cars again. Did not see a diner and with a diner one could have a nice passenger train that would not look bad on 9.75 radius. Did not see a sleeper either.
Thanks John for your reply. It’s a shame that something brand new out of the box has some issues. But I guess it happens.
According to NMRA recommended practice, a 60' N scale car should weigh just under 1.25 oz. What is the weight of the cars you received?
Really??? What rock have you been hiding under??? You would be hard pressed to find a new product that didn't have some sort of problem though typically easy to fix compared to some others... Micro-Trains doesn't yet have an appropriate four-wheel truck... may be better to look at the Wheels of Time four-wheel trucks, depending on where the hole on the Atlas trucks is. Can anyone take a shot of the bottom of the Atlas trucks???
They exist. But I see that they have been based on prototypes of two railroads, so the rest is just a Con-Cor like paintjob. I like the New Haven coaches, but according to my books the New Haven did not have 60 footers in the 6800-series. And 37$ for a fantasy model, no thanks...... I have some Con-Cor coaches but they were a lot cheaper and there were no prototypical models back then.
Okay, these were not on my radar as more passenger cars was not on my list. Atlas has now updated their web page.
Thieu, et al On prototypes- well, if we want heavyweight passenger cars, we have to accept that most designs, other than sleepers, were unique to a single railroad, or a group of railroads (often under the same ownership). So the manufacturer takes a design that meets their criteria and paints it in a variety of schemes. Those old Con-Cor shorties (the ones I assume you are talking about) have a prototype- a Japanese railroad. Atlas determined that there was a demand for 60' passenger cars. My guess is that most will be sold to folks who have no particular care about prototype. But some will also be sold to those who do care, but have small radius curves and cannot run an 80' car. Plus, of course, those who model CNW operations on lines that used these cars, and they are probably ecstatic. Personally, I will probably never buy a coach or combine or obs, other than perhaps as kitbash fodder. But the baggage and RPOs- those I have uses for. I think the reason they are doing baggage and RPO cars at all is because when they announced they were doing 60' cars, a lot of us lit up and said we had no use whatsoever for 60' coaches. But we did need RPOs and baggage cars. The RPOs are CNW prototype, but because of the window arrangement, are much closer to those of many other railroads than the Micro-trains car. The baggage car is likewise similar to the 60' baggage cars of several roads, but it is a design of the CNW. On heavyweight coaches, to date, in N scale, we have..... Rivarossi (and successors) and Microtrains- B&O paired window coach (very similar to paired window coaches of several other railroads such as FEC and CEI, but stand in for most of the roads either manufacturer has been produced in) Bachmann and Atlas- 60' Chicago and Northwestern (Did Bachmann ever produce the car in CNW paint?) Con-cor (Kato) - 57' Japanese prototype Lima (Model Power and other marketers) - loosely based on PRR P70 (and has the wrong trucks) Wheels of Time- Harriman design (a short car, but I think 60 some feet between end posts, so longer with vestibules- I don't have one, but think overall around 70') Maybe I am forgetting something, but I think that's it. So, if we have a coach, of any length, and model a road other than B&O, PRR, CNW, or a Harriman road, we are probably accepting some level of compromise ranging from a few rivets to variations of window arrangement or a few feet of length one way or the other. Personally, I run MT and Rivarossi paired window coaches in Canadian National, Wabash, and Erie (modified the windows and sanded off the rivets to approximate rebuilt cars of the 1950s), and some of the Lima P-70s (with different trucks and minor modifications) as Erie (in place of a long distance Stillwell) and Wabash. Very few people notice the stand ins.
There were quite a few roads that had passenger cars under the 70 foot length somewhere between 60 feet to 67 feet, but all were not of the same configuration as far as doors and windows, or even roofs. UP's cars had Harriman roofs for example and a lot of GN's stuff were combines or converted to combines later. A lot saw use as branchline passenger service and as such were often in mixed trains and had propane heat. A few even had bay windows added for the conductor and served as less than carload service. plus passenger carrying, and as the caboose on some branchlines. And as such the Atlas cars can serve as the fodder for some kit bashing by having a stack added for the roof for the propane heater, and a compartment door for the propane tank. Some thin styrene and modelers putty takes care of blocking in a door or windows. A bay window can be added by using a diesel all weather window, and there are several sizes of those available. And even if the original car was 67 foot the 60 foot model will still serve well as a model of a 65 or 67-68 foot car unless one is a rabid rivet counter. Perhaps the only car that might be a foobie is the observation car, and I say might, because has been proven many a time that somewhere there may be a prototype, one just has to be willing to take the time and do the research. And at least Atlas is ahead of Bachmann in that they gave their car a full platform. And as I said before about the modeler working in limited space with 9.75 radius curves, which would look better on the layout in those curves, a string of 80 foot Concor cars hanging over the track, or the more compact 60 foot Atlas cars. And they will go well with a 4-6-0,4-6-2, or a 2-8-2. A little more modern would put them behind a set of Fs either single or as an A B set, a single E unit, or even an RS unit with a steam generator in the sort hood. In a world filled with a plethora of big long cars it is nice to have something that fits well on a small home layout.
The JNR shorties date back to the very beginnings of N Gauge-at first they came with miniature X2f horn hook couplers! With Rapido couplers they were offered as kits with US roadname bodies printed in Chicago in the old cardboard box with slide-on plastic sleeve packaging. Con-Cor stopped importing them from Kato long before they moved to Arizona. Kato made new more detailed tooling for these JNR prototypes and still has them in their line from time to time. Con-Cor also later imported a slightly longer Kato JNR observation car that had six wheel trucks that IIRC was only used in the CR Inspection Train boxed set. Charlie Vlk
And as I said earlier about a prototype for just about everything I did come up with a Santa Fe business car that was 60 feet long in less than five minutes search. Santa-fe-404-06 by John Moore posted Apr 2, 2018 at 12:37 PM
Here is another example of a 60ft-ish Steel Business Car...this one Chicago & Illinois Midland No. 90. It began life in 1890 as a Chicago, Peoria & St. Louis wood coach which apparently received a steel underframe and steel sheathing. Charlie Vlk
No one is arguing that there aren't some 60' business cars out there. However, Atlas by their own admission, modeled a cut down version of a 72' Central of New Jersey observation car. Assuming it is cut down to 60'- in point of fact, I haven't seen one yet, so just going by the pictures. In any case, it bears little resemblance to the business cars, and will require major surgery. Maybe we could get sides etched. No doubt, these cars will be a great resource for kitbashing. Could be interesting to try to find 60' coach prototypes, so folks could have a list of roads that actually had them. Whether these could stand in for a 67 or 68 foot (overall) car is a matter for the individual. But certainly possible to make 2 68' or 72' cars out of 3 of the Atlas cars. And I can see the baggage cars having a lot of potential for this as well- this is the only N scale heavyweight baggage car with matching doors (all the others have one wide and one smaller door). So all that would be needed to represent, say, an L&N 70' baggage car would be to splice an extra 10' between the doors. Granted, a precise model might take a bit more work to get door positions spot on, but lots of possibilities.
On the CB&Q at least some of their 60FT RPOs started out in the configuration of the M-T car. There were later modified to the window arrangement of the Atlas car. The Atlas RPO is probably more common in the Transition era than the M-T for most roads. The Baggage, Combine and Coach are C&NW prototypes. The Baggage can be a stand-in for NYC System cars which were very common in interchange service carrying magazines and catalogs all over The US and Canada before the advent of distributed publishing. I have a stash of the Bachmann cars bought just for their trucks before WOT and now Atlas had four wheel passenger car trucks. The Bachmann cars are not in the current catalog except as part of one train set so the Atlas cars are the choice for small layouts that need shorties that are prototypical except for the Observation which still can be used as a Business Car. Charlie Vlk
I received my Unlettered 60' RPO today and am very favorably impressed. Atlas chose to offset mount the trucks (probably to get more coupler swing to accommodate sharper curves) so the stirrup steps under the RPO doors are truck mounted, but still look okay on the track. Without pulling out my M-T RPO the detail looks to be equal to MT. The Diaphragms are interesting; molded out of a soft rubber/plastic with a shorter version mounted on the car and an alternative longer set in the box for mounting if the customer prefers them closer to the coupler interface. Mine will get painted up in Silver. Unfortunately none of the 60' cars got simulated stainless steel fluting but one of the 70' Baggage/RPOs did so I will have to make up a set of decals for the M-T car. Charlie Vlk