Curious what the HO folks think of this? MT teaming with Accurail to do some weathered HO rolling stock?
Will they come assembled? Currently I have several (unbuilt) of Accurail's kits and set a lot of store by them. Only two factors interfere in trying these out: Overall I want to weather my own. I have enough cars. Looks good. @BNSF FAN Thanks! for Posting. Edit To answer my own question it appears that they do come assembled.
This was asked "on another network"... the short answer, which I'm paraphrasing a bit, is that the Kadee cars would be harder to work with for their weathering process. I'll add my unofficial thoughts: In N Scale, MTL recently released Weathered Cars on their highly detailed TBOX car body style (formal name: 123 Series 60 Foot High-Cube Exterior Post Double Plug Door Boxcar), with a modification to the doors to enable the weathering to go over the hardware. Also, I suspect but don't know for sure at present that they're starting with undecorated kits from Accurail as well. And finally, I think that the base price of Kadee cars would make their Weathered Releases quite costly. By the way, all three of these cars have been done by MTL in N Scale. I will have a section in the forthcoming February 2024 Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report on these Grit and Grime cars which heavily borrows from my previous coverage. I'm thinking about posting an excerpt online so that HO Scalers don't need to go through the usual N and Z Scale coverage to reach those particular bytes.
The printing process for the weathering is pretty interesting. It's not a pad printing operation like normal road number and stencil prints, it's more like a laser printing process. Some brands in Europe use it for commemorative models. Hornby used a similar process for the Beatles Eurostar trainset. My only concern is the fact that the ends are clean. The slope sheets and end cages appear to be the body color, rather than match the heavily weathered appearance of the rest of the model. It's most obvious on the Southern hopper. The sides are completely rusted, but the ends are perfect grey paint. For a $50 dollar model, I think all surfaces on the car shell should be weathered. The price just feels like a lot to ask for an otherwise basic Accurail kit. At least Micro-Trains does a lot of work in the US, so that's something I can get behind.
With the Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report for February finally out the door, I've created a special excerpt covering only the Grit and Grime Car pre-orders. Free and worth at least that much... help yourself to the PDF. It's just a little too long to post as a direct reply here. @Mr. Trainiac, I've included a few bytes with respect to your question about end weathering.
Micro-Trains announced pre-orders for a fourth 2 Bay Center Flow in the Grit and Grime Series; pre-order window through March 31 with targeted delivery in August. https://micro-trains.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=206&product_id=5184 It's a Western Maryland/CSXT Restencil. Like the first three, this is an "upsizing" of a previous N Scale Release; specifically, Catalog Number 092 44 490, issued as #2 in their "CSX Family Tree Series." My UMTRR coverage of that car was in the November 2021 issue, which is available as a Back Issue on my website.
