I distinctly remember one of the hobby shop "experts" holding court on Saturday morning proclaiming them to be "under scale" for HO... "closer to TT." The point of comparison, of course, was the "Standard" Athearn boxcar - which was of course considerably taller than the TMI offering. The idea that all boxcars weren't the same size was apparently lost on this soul.

I heard this "TMI are undersized" enough that I think it impacted sales to some extent, at least in our local store. I can't prove that opinion didn't impact sales beyond my little corner of the world, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.

Marty McGuirk



--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Anthony Thompson <thompson@> wrote:

Richard Hendrickson wrote:
Richard is certainly right about the TM models from today's perspective, but remember that when they appeared, they offered a starting point for the ARA single-sheathed box car, and a decent body for an X29, despite its limitations. In that day and age, many modelers were delighted to re-detail that X29 (and if serious, to correct the truck spacing) because there was NOTHING ELSE. How soon we forget.