Good Enough

I subscribe to Allen McClelland's good enough philosophy as I am building a layout for operations. I am sorry to see Athearn drop the Blue Box line as it was an inexpensive way to build a fleet.  I am buying Athearn  (BB) and Roundhouse (MDC) cars on Ebay.  I upgrade the kits with weight to NMRA standards, add metal wheel sets and KD couplers.  When I have time, I add some weathering. 

I have difficulty with the new plastic rails on Athearn, Atlals, PK2 and Kato locomotives ahd have broken a few while performing maintenance on the locomotives.

I agree with your comentary.  I guess I have been running in reverse all of this time.

I agree about the plastic handrails on locomotives.

I have never seen a set of those things hold up.  They might be fine if they were never touched, but it seems that they do get bumped sometimes and they will bend and not return to shape very easily.  Unfortunately, Athearn claims that the machine that bends the stanchions for the original style steel handrails is broken and no one at the plant knows how to repair it.  Smokey Valley makes brass castings for both types of EMD stanchions and GE stanchions, I think.  They have a lot of flash on the castings to clean up, but I plan to install brass stanchions with hand bent piano wire rails on all of my locomotives.  I may save the plastic handrails to be cut up and used as handrails on structures when I build my layout.  I want to try Sergents couplers on my home switching layout, so I may use brass wire for the handrails if the piano wire creates a problem with the Sergents magnets.

I am going to try to replace the plastic grabs and ladders on craftsmen type freight car kits with brass to see if it will hold up better.  If not, I will not use those cars at the modular club anymore.  My home layout room really won't accomodate more than two people, so I will probably operate it alone most of the time.  When my grandsons get old enough to try switching operations, I'll fit some Acurail, Athearn, or other "shake the box" type cars with the Sergents and let them learn on those before I bring out the highly detailed cars.

hand rails

can you not still order the metal handrails for the athearn locomotives?

I'm not sure about the handrails.

A friend of mine uses the stanchions and bends up his own hand rails.  I picked up the last set of stanchions left at the local hobby shop for him since he lives a ways away and I live just down the street.  They looked up on line and found a few more sets listed in a warehouse back East somewhere, but once those are gone, there will be no more stanchions.

Those of you lamenting the

Those of you lamenting the demise of Athearn BBs really need to look at the Accurail line. Much finer detail, not very expensive and very durable in operations.

I like the Accurail models.

I just need to special order them.  My local hobby shop has a couple of guys in the train dept. who have tried to encourage modelers to try building kits, but have had no success.  I just bought the last two 4 packs of P2k 50 foot single door boxcar kits they had on the shelf.  Those kits have been there for a couple of years at least, and I just could not stand to see them languishing while the r-t-r stuff flew off the shelf.

Depends!

I'm torn between both sides of the debate!

When operating at the club I generally take the less detailed stock, especially if others will be handling them. However, at home, albeit with a fairly simple 'operations' layout, I like the more detailed stuff. But then being the only operator I try to take more care!

Brian

Horizon

Yes, hobby distributor Horizon owns Athearn in the same way that Walther's owns Life-Like (although I don't expect to see Horizon branded trains anytime soon).

Some people say that plastic

Some people say that plastic today's brass, but I'll be quite honest, once all those little details break off the plastic locomotive and the my brass beauty still has all of hers, well, you can bet your money where my money will be!!!

[mmm mmmm mmm I do love a good brass locomotive.  Have to sell a couple right now, but...it's all in good stride!]

EMD567, that is where the local hobby shop looked for them.

There are only a few packages left in their eastern warehouse.  When they are gone, there will be no more.  It isn't a problem for me, I like the detail of the brass Smokey Valley stanchions, but my friend doesn't like having to clean the flash on them, and prefers Athearn.

Benny, my problem with brass, besides price and generally poor mechanisms, is trying to operate on a reasonable radius without shorting out.  I was fortunate to operate on the La Mesa club layout with a 48 inch radius using a members brass SP Mountain.  On their 48 inch radius, it only shorted a couple of times.

Couldn't agree more

I think this article hits hit right on the head. I have to admit, I love the fine detail on rolling stock, especially on tank cars where I think it really makes a huge difference. However for operations it makes me nervous handling my own cars for any reason let alone somebody else's fine detailed $35 dollar a piece rolling stock. Which brings me to the biggest reason I don't have alot of these exact scale detailed cars on my layout. They are simply too expensive. I understand WHY they are, but I have a hard time admitting to anyone, let alone my wife, that the 15 car train you see rolling in front of you with DCC and sound equiped locos is about as much as that new bedroom set she's been eyeing!

Cost is all relative, though

My wife thought my hobby was expensive until we went to her brother's house and saw his new motorbike.  He spent more on that bike than I will spend on trains in 10 years.  She didn't think my hobby was so bad after that.  Then there was my boss who bought a '68 Camaro and is restoring it.  Model trains pale in comparison to many other hobbies.  Its all relative.

Money?

Gosh, Dave. You obviously aren't buying enough Overland, Hallmark, or Divison Point brass motive power...

Charlie

Yep, hobbies are fun!

<

Yeah but you can't drive your train to work or even to the train club.  But then I remember the 1968 Camaro.

My favorite car from back then was the 1963 Grand Prix my father owned in the late 1960s and early 1970s before it ws traded in for a 1972 LeMans. The Grand Prix had nothing in it but it was fun to drive and it could take little bumps with no damage. Those bumpers were great.

Irv

Went to a classic car & hot rod show on Saturday

A local car collection was holding it's "once a year" open house and I suggested to my Dad that he and I go up for it (I know this is a subject my Dad is familar with). He in turn invited one of his cousins who is very into it.

It was fun, I shot over 150 photos.... and then went on a little side trip to a local hobby shop that I hadn't been to yet (additionally, they'd just moved to a larger location). Since I'd warned my wife I'd be spending money, it was without any guilt that I picked up a new QSI Revolution-A sound decoder for one of my GP39-2s.

One thing was noted - nearly all the guys who were there with cars were at least retirement age if not beyond. Like in model railroading, they are frequently the ones with the correct combination of money and time to spend on their hobbies.

As for how much money... there was a mid-60s Chevy Nova advertised for sale at the cruise-in. For a cool $23,500 it could have been yours.  A 1931 Ford didn't even have a price posted - I'm guessing if you were in the market, you'd know how much it was worth.

OTOH, I'm getting an idea for a cruise-in on the layout as a place for all of those "older than my era and overly exotic" vehicles that I've collected.

Cruise in - Run in

Jeff,

I like that idea,  Then I could run my Varney, Ulrich, Ambroid, and my "My blue-box-athearn-is-older-than-yours" cars.  And, to return to the thread point, None of them have parts easily broken (or at least any parts remaining that could be easily broken).

Seriously, that could be a very interesting run.  I'm sure we all have some pieces of rolling stock, that caught our eye and our wallet, that could be classed as "exotic", or at least very unusual.

There's always the top of the

There's always the top of the market - and then there's the other stuff that doesn't get any press, but it's what is more common and we all have it.

If you want an old car [30-40-60] years old, they're for sale - EVERYWHERE.  And at prices you can afford.  You just have to go looking...

Now holding empty wallet

Yeah, like these Baldwin beasties from Overland.

And don't remind me of the 12 painted with detailed interiors Southern Pacific heavweight passenger cars from Coach Yard to be pulled by a couple of Division Point's FP7s.

Ah, the museum....

I have an excuse for old or unusual locomotives that might wander onto the layout. His name is Doyle McCormack.

http://www.trainweb.org/mccann/photos.htm

There is even precendent at the Portland & Western/Willamette & Pacific has indeed leased units owned by people out of the Brooklyn Roundhouse in the past.

my thoughts

Liked the editorial Charlie.  Hard to argue with the 3' rule, however, I'd like to make the case for finer detail.  First, let me say that I miss the old blue box kits, MDC kits, LBF, etc. too.  These new ready-to-roll cars have a lot better detail, but can cost an arm and a leg!  My preference is that if I'm gonna spend $40 on a freight car, I'd rather spend it on scratchbuilding supplies, detail parts, paint, and decals.  Then I can get an exact replica for the car I want, plus, my hobby dollars get stretched out over several evenings (months?) of enjoyable modelmaking.  Also missing those kits due to the inexpensive cost to get base models and parts for harvesting.  Swap meets are my salvation.  As for the fragile parts breaking...  This irritates me too, so now I try to build in some robust details.  My rule of thumb is to use styrene on flat stuff, like boxcar ribs, and use brass for ladders, stirrups, and such (tip: don't use those plastic stirrup step detail parts!).  I'm careful handling the custom cars, but not to the point of paranoia. Personal experience has shown that off-the-shelf blue box cars don't fare much better when plunging to the basement floor.  Building prototypical stuff is my favorite aspect of the hobby, so that is how I approach things.  That said, I have a substantial fleet of basic stand-ins accumulated over the years that operate on the layout.

But I know it's there.

I like the detail on InterMountain tank and box cars.  Nobody can spot them from three feet away and I don't have mirrors so you can see the underside as the consist rolls by.  However, it's like painting the inside of a 1/35th tank turrent that nobody will see after you glue it all down.  Or the fact that I don't have duplicate road numbers on my rolling stock.  Nobody can see or notice it, but I know it's there.  And that brings a smile to my face.  And, yes, stuff breaks.  I had a six-pack set of InterMountain tank cars on the rails for about 10 minutes.  I did not first check the wheel gauges or couplers.  My fault.  On the first curve the cars derailed and a $32 nicely detailed tank car was on the floor in too many pieces to put together.  Now I have a highly detailed tank car that I can put at the bottom of a gully.  If I was afraid of stuff breaking I wouldn't buy anything.

-Jim

Plastic Details

I think that it is crazy that, locomotives especially, have fine plastic details like railings. They fall out of the holes, they bend and they break. When you spend $100 to $500 for a locomotive, it should have metal handrails. How much more could that cost. I doubt that it would cost much more and it would be well worth the cost to have the quality that would last. When I opened up my new Blueline locomotive to put in the decoder I broke off some fine hand railings. It just makes me sick to see this happen. If it had been metal, it would have been fine.