Hello, the new 72' baggage cars made by Walthers have arrived. Does anybody know which ones are prototypical and which ones are pure fantasy? (E.g., the Great Northern 10-6 sleeper is pure fantasy while the ATSF 10-6 sleeper is not.) Frank
How ironic that this thread is listed right under the "Walthers new products--why lack of N scale?" thread
We have been waiting two years for them to materialize though, here's a thread on what prototype they are started on 2nd September 2007. We've been waiting so long we've forgotten about them.:sleepy: Walthers Baggage Car Prototype - TrainBoard.com
Let's See Them! Do we have any pictures of the actual models? Something we can pick on and critique? Perhaps we can complain about the price? Rumor mill stuff? Anything?err:
Oops... I started a similar thread to this one! My inclination is that D&RGW did NOT have a similar enough car to warrant the purchase of the Walthers 72' Baggage. D&RGW had a few heavyweight type baggage cars in the 70' range though. Wheels of Times baggage cars more closely resemble D&RGW' large fleet of 700 series of 60' baggage cars... and ConCor/Riva 85' cars are similar to the 1210-1212 series of D&RGW cars. Someone commented on a similar thread I started that Northern Pacific may have some similar versions of the Walthers car. I have not seen photos or drawings to confirm that and I would be interested to get some confirmation... as it may justify purchasing one or two.
$32.00 a pop? !!! Glad I dont run passenger service...:thumbs_down: Now I know the world has gone completely MAD!!! Oii :tb-mad: .
I won't pay it! Hear, hear, or pre 1700's Hear him, hear him. I won't pay for a single car item, anything over $ 22.00 a pop for a passenger train car. Absurd is the word that comes to mind.:we2-policeman:
Yep... absolutely crazy man... Some other e-tailers have them for under $30.00... but still... a stinking baggage car cost nearly as much as some powered locomotives. That's why I'm being very selective of the models I do get now. Why pay this kind of money for a 'sort-of close to' prototype? When you see Kato putting out complete prototypically correct passenger sets with an MSRP of ~$25.00 per car and much less after dealer discounts. These 'imposter cars' are very hard to swallow at these prices.
Hard to swallow? Maybe for some but for others these will be the closest they will ever see to their roads cars. I'd rather have a baggage car in SP or Rock from Walthers than none at all. The cars from Rapido are correct for almost nothing but Canadian roads but they are selling in fleets. Many, maybe most SP baggage cars looked nothing like the Walthers car but I'll run them anyway with a on my face. I can guarantee you that life is too short to be too picky.
I'm afraid that picky is the problem. The pickier we get, the pricier the stuff. And still we "pick." I'm learning to love my old Rivarossi passenger cars. At least they weren't unreasonable in price and they are beginning to look better and better. Ben
Yes, this is so true! Add in the "picky nature" of modelers and/or human nature in general, and its all to easy to focus on what we don't have rather than what we do. I had a few minutes to run trains this morning while waiting for my kids to get ready for a trip and I was just happy to run them, seeing two long N scale trains meet and pass on my double track main! My stack train had a mix of Kato, MDC Walthers and other cars. They had varying quality and level of detail, but it mattered not. My merchandise train even had one old Atlas reefer, which I noticed, but which did not detract from my enjoyment whatsoever (it will probably go in the trash now that I noticed it...I got it as part of an estate sale and don't know why I kept it) So, take a page from George and enjoy running some trains! At age 54, it is still sort of magically soothing for me, just like when I was a kid. Lets not forget that this is what model railroading is all about!
I hear'ya... I was about to put most of my old ConCor/Riva stuff on eBay when I saw Walthers, Rapido and Intermountain/Centralia Car Shops offering more detailed passenger cars a couple years ago. I figured I'd 'upgrade' to more prototypical cars when those come out. To my dismay... many are not going to be much more (if at all) prototypical than what I already have! The Centralia Car Shop cars seem to be the closest to correct... but... I don't see them putting out any D&RGW four stripe cars or Northern Pacific NCL cars. Right now... my ConCor/Riva lightweight and heavyweights are apparently going to be around a while. They were cheap and looked okay... and based on the current price point of replacements... not likely to be replaced until Centralia Car Shops or another maker does ACCURATE cars for D&RGW and NP. I agree... that if you don't have any options other than 'close'... and you don't have a lifetime to wait for the right cars to be made... these offerings are going to be acceptable. I didn't know back in the 1980's/1990's that the ConCor/Riva cars were not prototypically correct until some people brought up that fact. I still ran them and enjoyed running them despite the lack of proto-fidelity... and those who didn't know any better thought they looked great too. In the absence of a better choice... these new cars are the 'best available'.
The average person doesn't buy but one or two of these cars, and he/she will only buy them mainly for their home road. As an example, when Atlas tools a new box car, they can sell it in 20 different schemes and 15 of those may be usable on any given model railroad however you are not going to see CP, BN, CN, Rock Island, etc. etc. passenger equipment on a Southern based railroad. Passenger cars by their nature will not sell as many units as a freight car so they will always cost more. The same holds true with cabooses.
There is a trick, secret, little known fact, kind of dumb luck, ahh...oh shucks. I tend to wait until my LHS wants to self off his stock in preparation for the new Christmas stuff. Many times the high dollar item is reduced to below his cost and I can pick-up what I want in a price range that suits me. I agree with our friends at Wig Wag, in that this may be the only way to get cars for their choice of railroad outside of painting and lettering their own passenger car. I will wait until Wig Wag drops the price before ordering one. Grin! I do appreciate Kato's offerings, of late. I may have broke my own rule of purchasing but for the first time I now have as authentic a Santa Fe train, as is possible. Same goes for my SP Daylighter. Anyway, the prices go up, the value goes down, nickel and dime'd for taxes and I wonder why my dollar stretcher keeps tearing and shredding the bills. mad: grrrr
LOL Very good. wink: Now there's a smart business woman. You better hang on to her. You can see I will be safe with you two. I won't be over spending. cute: Chuckles!
Yeah, and I don't get it why people are buying these Rapido cars. If they model CN, CP or Via, fine, but not for other companies. Actually, I am picky - at least to some extent. We are modellers - if we'd like fantasy, we would play RPG. Shouldn't we make a list of the prototypical models? At least the one for Great Northern is prototypical. What about NP, Amtrak, ATSF and UP. These are the ones I would buy to. Frank
For a European, it is a little strange to see that American manufacturers make so many fake models of coaches and other passenger equipment. When I look at my Dutch coaches* (by Minitrix and Fleischmann), I see that they are correct models and not yellow-and-blue painted German prototypes. Of course, they have also made some fake models: an American Minitrix switcher disguised as a Dutch switcher, or German freight cars with Dutch lettering. The most curious model to me was the Dutch 1200 series with New Haven paint, trying to look like a NH Jet.:tb-err::tb-biggrin: But hey, that was decades ago. But Canadian coaches with B&O paint, fantasy cars like Overlands, non-existing baggage cars for $ 35.... Strange. * I mean: 'looked'. I have sold most of it recently, in order to be able to buy a NH 44t and some nice vehicles. :thumbs_up:
Sigh... I complain a lot about the lack of fidelity to the prototype (among other complaints LOL). My complaint with respect to this is... that if we accept fake models... then manufacturers have very little real incentive to make the correct models. Manufacturers for the most part... have been listening to the 'complaints' or suggestions from modelers who want to run locomotives and rolling stock which truely represents the prototype. The 'bar' for realism has been going up ever since the hobby in general has been around. If were were to stop 'complaining or suggesting' then the likelyhood for advancement is less certain. Improvements to railroad models cost the manufacturer money and it is understandable that those costs will be passed on to the consumer... but at least do the right models and don't 'hide' the fact that they are not prototypical for that railroad. Many of us can't really tell the difference... but... prefer to have a true scale miniature of the prototype for the railroad being modeled instead of a 'sort-of-close' representation of the prototype for that railroad. I hate accept a 'close to prototype' model for the roads I follow and then pay for it at premium price... it is a dis-incentive for me to continue buying. Now what is even WORSE... since Walthers is putting out individual models over several months or years... once we begin collecting their versions of passenger cars with the correct or incorrect design for the different railroads... we may just 'give-in' and buy them regardless whether they represent the prototype or not. By purchasing wrong ones along with the correct ones... we may give the impression we DON'T care if they are correct or incorrect for the railroad being modeled. Thieu... I can understand why these 'fakes' happens here in the USA. I believe at one time there were about 100 Class One railroads operating in the USA. There were many railroads and each one had there own needs and designs. Some of them may have had similar 'off-the-shelf' locomotives and rolling stock which could be easily duplicated as models for several of those railroads. To complicate that even more... US railroads often built their own versions of rolling stock which might resemble a type built by a railcar manufacturer(ie; Pullman-Standard, Budd, St Louis Car Co, American Car & Foundry etc). I could be very wrong about this... but I believe other countries usually only had a few different railroads (many government run I believe) with a greater degree of standardization within the country. The variations were mosty only country to country... rather than railroad to railroad within the country.
