It depends on what you want. If you have a small layout with tight curves, they look better going around than longer cars would. If you are looking for something closer to what Southern Pacific really had, they are pretty generic. These cars actually have no full size prototype but are quite close copies of the old HO Athern Blue Box passenger cars.
Yes, ony the Railway Post Office car is a prototype length. They even shortened them some from the already short Athern HO cars they copied.
I always thought it was just part of the times. In the mid to late 1960's N scale was still a novelty toy to many manufacturers and they compromised a lot. Arnold took existing chassis from European prototype trains and popped North American style shells on them. Their "Standard" curved snap track was 250mm radius (9-3/4") and long cars looked real goofy going around it. So it was just another compromise. Other manufacturers like Atlas and Con Cor started to bring out more prototype models but Arnold still sold these cars for a long time. They did upgrade many of their locomotives to better model North American practice.
I got mine for free!! I bought a few other items and the guy begged me to take a couple. I took an RPO. Andrew
Arnold produced in the late 70s most of there passenger cars too short and keep producing it until they were out of business. We always believed Arnold had only one typ of plastic case and all the models had to fit in it, no matter how long the model should have been.
