Tim-

Sorry, I was thinking about the topic from the perspective of a manufacturer or importer, not as an informed Model Railroader.

Sad as it is, sales do not follow the prototype. People don't buy in correlation with what existed in the real world.
So as to not get bogged down in Freight Car arguments, lets use the example of locomotives to illustrate the point. How many GG-1s have been made in model form and sold vs. the fleet that the PRR had on a small portion of their railroad. Ditto, even more, for the UP Big Boy..... Going to more reasonable examples, even something as widely used as the Alco FA and PA series do not sell in proportion to their EMD competing models....

The fact that modelers SHOULD buy a prototype because it showed up widely doesn't mean they WILL. In passenger cars, almost everyone should have a PRR B60 to run in their trains right up to AMTRAK... but most (the people that pay for the production models) will say "But I don't model the PRR!!!".

I am a big supporter of the "Essential Freight Car" school of thought.... and my absurd comment (pun or not) was based on the general market.

I hope some of the other "low hanging fruit" does get championed and made.... N Scale already has the GSC Depressed Center Flat but certainly lacks some of the other common cars that HO already enjoys....

Charlie Vlk



Charlie Vlk wrote

>Richard-
>I can't argue with you on the absurdity of tooling cars in plastic that can
>only be used for one railroad and a limited number of paint jobs.....

Why is it absurd? Consider Trailer Train flat cars for example -- not many
owners, but they ran everywhere! Or distinctive prototypes that were found
on almost all railroads -- X29, M26, MILW rib sides, B&O wagontops, XM-1's,
NYC 1920's steel box cars, and so on. Not to mention PFE and SFRD and FGE
reefers. And I still strongly wish for a plastic UTLX X-3...

>But when you get right down to it, that is where we are at in the Hobby and
>Marketplace right now. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked.

I beg to differ with that -- how about the ALTERNATE STANDARD AAR HOPPERS?
How about Bethlehem 52'6" mill gondolas? And GSC 125 ton depressed center
flat cars? (Lots of owners over a very long lifetime.) And over on another
list we've discussed the General American Dry-Flo covered hoppers, built
1958 to 1962, with 56 original owners and lessors -- that's a LOT of paint
schemes!

I think we should keep shaking the tree -- I suspect there is more fruit
to be found.

Tim O'Connor

Richard,

Thank you for your reply. All your points are valid and you reached the
same conclusion that I really wanted to make is that a RTR model of the
B&O M-53 wagon-top would meet similar criteria. I do hope a styrene
version will appear soon that has been hinted at for many years.

Bob Witt

P.S. I included the MDC/Roundhouse to be complete and as you state it is
not a scale model of a ribbed side at all.


Richard Hendrickson replied:

There are a few other such steam-era prototypes which, though
"signature" cars for a single railroad, would meet the same criteria
and thus would probably sell in large enough numbers to justify
tooling models, the most obvious example being the B&O wagon top box
cars, which are said to be coming (finally) in RTR styrene. Bear in
mind that many of the sales of such models are to people who are
attracted to them not because they are historically significant or
prototypically accurate but just because they're noticeably different.

to what Bob Witt wrote:

Richard and Charlie,

I will add, if it is absurd, then it seems remarkable that we have

in

styrene, models of the Milwaukee "ribbed-side" boxcars in multiple
variations from three new vendors in HO scale, plus the old
MDC/Roundhouse, and from Fox Valley Models in N scale.

Charlie Vlk wrote

Richard-
I can't argue with you on the absurdity of tooling cars in plastic that can
only be used for one railroad and a limited number of paint jobs.....

Why is it absurd? Consider Trailer Train flat cars for example -- not many
owners, but they ran everywhere! Or distinctive prototypes that were found
on almost all railroads -- X29, M26, MILW rib sides, B&O wagontops, XM-1's,
NYC 1920's steel box cars, and so on. Not to mention PFE and SFRD and FGE
reefers. And I still strongly wish for a plastic UTLX X-3...

But when you get right down to it, that is where we are at in the Hobby and
Marketplace right now. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked.

I beg to differ with that -- how about the ALTERNATE STANDARD AAR HOPPERS?
How about Bethlehem 52'6" mill gondolas? And GSC 125 ton depressed center
flat cars? (Lots of owners over a very long lifetime.) And over on another
list we've discussed the General American Dry-Flo covered hoppers, built
1958 to 1962, with 56 original owners and lessors -- that's a LOT of paint
schemes!

I think we should keep shaking the tree -- I suspect there is more fruit
to be found.

Tim O'Connor

On May 30, 2010, at 9:05 AM, rwitt_2000 wrote:

Charlie Vlk wrote:

I can't argue with you on the absurdity of tooling cars in plastic

that can only be used for one railroad and a limited number of paint
jobs.....

Richard and Charlie,

I will add, if it is absurd, then it seems remarkable that we have in
styrene, models of the Milwaukee "ribbed-side" boxcars in multiple
variations from three new vendors in HO scale, plus the old
MDC/Roundhouse, and from Fox Valley Models in N scale.

Bob, those models are exceptions to the general principle for a
number of reasons:

1. There were a great number of them; the MILW had one of the
largest freight car fleets on the continent, and for more than a
decade thousands of box cars added to that fleet were all home-built
rib-side cars.

2. The rib-side cars were very distinctive in appearance at a time
when most RRs' box cars were of look-alike AAR standard design.

3. The MILW's XM box cars traveled everywhere on the North American
rail system in interchange and were often seen very far from MILW rails.

There are a few other such steam-era prototypes which, though
"signature" cars for a single railroad, would meet the same criteria
and thus would probably sell in large enough numbers to justify
tooling models, the most obvious example being the B&O wagon top box
cars, which are said to be coming (finally) in RTR styrene. Bear in
mind that many of the sales of such models are to people who are
attracted to them not because they are historically significant or
prototypically accurate but just because they're noticeably different.

By the way, I wouldn't count the old MDC kits as scale models, since
only the sides resembled the MILW cars; the rest of the models (roof,
underframe, ends, doors) were based on the standard AAR design and
thus entirely inaccurate.


Richard Hendrickson

Charlie Vlk wrote:

Richard-

I can't argue with you on the absurdity of tooling cars in plastic

that can only be used for one railroad and a limited number of paint
jobs.....

Richard and Charlie,

I will add, if it is absurd, then it seems remarkable that we have in
styrene, models of the Milwaukee "ribbed-side" boxcars in multiple
variations from three new vendors in HO scale, plus the old
MDC/Roundhouse, and from Fox Valley Models in N scale.

Did I miss any?

Regards,

Bob Witt

I forgot to mention my wish list item and that would be steel gons in the 40 foot range--not long mill gons that have been produced too frequently. Of course, that brings up the same problem that Richard mentioned with the 40's single sheath boxcars--lack of standardization for multiple roads. And the folks in the model train manufacturer marketing department probably don't get excited about these cars as they usually are rather nondescript compared to house cars often with larger logos plus slogans.

Victor Baird
Fort Wayne, Indiana

--- In STMFC@..., Richard Hendrickson <rhendrickson@...> wrote:

In my opinion, what us steam and transition era modelers need most
right now are single sheathed 40' box cars.

I can't agree more.

--- In STMFC@..., Richard Hendrickson <rhendrickson@...> wrote:
Demographics are against us; to be blunt, many of us who model the steam era are geezers whose numbers dwindle significantly every year. The majority of modelers of every age tend to model what they remember from their childhood and adolescence, so there's an inevitable shift in emphasis away from the steam era toward more recent periods of railroad history.

I am not an old geezer (born in 1957) and I model the early 1950's and know a number of other baby boomers that model the steam or transition era that never saw it in person though we remember the "covered wagons", geeps, interlocking towers, passenger trains, etc. 20 years after that. And steam programs have enthused many modelers into the romance of steam. The better, affordable plastic steam out there with sound has changed some younger folks' modeling tastes too. IMO, modeling is sometimes like graduating from rock and roll to jazz and classical music in the later years of your life when you began to appreciate the finer points. As to modeling what I grew up with in my adolescence, I wouldn't model Penn Central if you paid me.

Victor Baird
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Richard-

I can't argue with you on the absurdity of tooling cars in plastic that can only be used for one railroad and a limited number of paint jobs.....

But when you get right down to it, that is where we are at in the Hobby and Marketplace right now. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked.
And when you really get into the nitty-gritty, even some of the "common" cars vary by road, lot, etc... when it comes to the details. Not very conducive to a medium that would like to see Athearn Blue Box tooling usage. It is bad enough that people won't buy multiples of the same SKU anymore and want multiple roadnumbers and paint schemes for each road..... production and supply become very difficult with small quantities of a large variety of different items.

I think what is going to have to happen is what has happened.... instead of designing a kinda-like sorta generic model as things were done in the 1950s, somebody is going to look at what is missing from the market and pick a prototype that moves towards filling a gap. They'll tool an accurate car, do as many dead accurate or really, really close paint jobs on it to make the faithful happy, and then do sorta close to foobie paint jobs on the cars to help pay off the tooling and hopefully make a buck or two.

I agree with you regarding the single sheathed 40 FT box cars..... the War Emergency car was a good step in that direction, but as you pointed out, every railroad seemed to have to reinvent the wheel on them. Same is true for the 50 FT 1 1/2 door cars. But it would be nice to be able to buy a low, sawtooth Soo Line 40FT SS car to contrast in height and length in a train next to with a CB&Q 50 FT 1 1/2 Door.

Hopefully manufacturers will pick a car that looks different enough from what is already on the market and do a good job of making a model. A well-executed accurate model will sell, even if it isn't of a prototype that we'd prefer this time.

Yes, we will lose some of our specialty manufacturers who were able to supply prototypes that would have been impossible to hope for in production models when they built their businesses. But the bar has been raised for what we can hope to see in plastic and technology has changed what is possible for specialty manufacturers to do and new ones may come in to continue their missions. This may be the Golden Age of Model Railroading (Steam Era Freight Cars) but I don't think that we've seen the peak yet. Nor am I equally sure that as time marches on there will be radically fewer STMFC modelers...... people get interested in Civil War reenacting, as an example, and I don't think too many of them do so because that's what they remember from their childhood. While with each tick of the clock we get a wider range of possible prototypes, It is just a more interesting era to model!!!!

Charlie Vlk

Nothing, I answer, as I have several of each, but they are not the prototype I'm looking for, which is the one in this photo of a Utah Coal Route GS gon: http://www.mindat.org/photo-254652.html


Richard Townsend
Lincoln City, Oregon

On May 28, 2010, at 11:35 AM, Bruce Smith wrote:

I love these speculation fests... Gons can be a bit more of a
difficult sell - any eastern roads with Enterprise gons?

AFAIK, the only eastern road that had GS gondolas in significant
numbers was B&M, and they weren't of Enterprise design. Besides, we
already have the later Enterprise gons for SP and UP, though it would
be nice to have the earlier cars (as once modeled by Ulrich) as well.

I would also think that the following might be good if someone were
looking for projects:
- I second the notion of the GATC tank car

Under serious consideration.

- UTLX X-3 (as I doubt I will ever get enough of Martin's kits done)

Every manufacturer who has considered this has been scared off by the
fact that only UTL owned them and there are very few accurate P/L
schemes (actually, only one apart from some very odd-ball
exceptions). Many on this list would buy a bunch of these models,
but they would be of hardly any interest to the toy train collectors,
vesties, and perpetual beginners in the hobby who far outnumber us.

- Harriman Standard 40'10" SP/UP flat cars

One of the better manufacturers is thinking about this, though far
from being committed.

- 1921/22 and 1927/28 FGE/WFE reefers (as built, not the modified IM
car)

Not a chance. Not many of us model a date before the 1950s, by which
time all (or almost all) of the FGE/WFE cars had been rebuilt.

Other suggestions have included such unlikely prototypes as Rio
Grande 12 panel box cars with Duryea underframes, 46' Rio Grande and
WP gondolas, and CB&Q 1-1/2 door single sheathed auto cars. Hello?
What are you guys smoking? Raise your hand if you would like to
spend your own money on the development and tooling for such
projects. Gee, I don't see any hands raised. I wonder why? These
are classic examples of prototypes which might make sense for resin
kits but are economically absurd for RTR styrene.

In my opinion, what us steam and transition era modelers need most
right now are single sheathed 40' box cars. Look at any freight yard
or freight train photo from the '40s and '50s, even the late '50s,
and they were all over the place; yet accurate, correctly painted and
lettered models are almost non-existent except in resin. The problem
is that most of the prototype cars were built during the 1920s when
there was scarcely any standardization of design, so there are none
that could be correctly modeled for more than one or two RRs. There
were, however, a few examples that were built in such large numbers
for one railroad that they're worth considering. For example, MILW
had a huge fleet of essentially identical SS boxcars built in the
early '20s that went everywhere in interchange. And then there were
a vast number of SP/T&NO B-50-13s and B-50-14s which were essentially
alike except for roofs and some other minor details, and some of
those got rebuilt in later years with Dreadnaught ends replacing
their original SS ends. Santa Fe got thousands of modified ARA SS
box cars in the late 1920s, many (though not all) of which got
distinctive extended height roofs during World War two and lasted in
that form way into the 1960s. Other RRs like the CB&Q and Rock
Island had a lot of SS box cars, as well, but their design kept
changing so that there weren't any dominant prototypes.

The number of steam era prototype freight cars for which injection
molded styrene models might sell well enough to make a modest profit
has diminished to almost none. Demographics are against us; to be
blunt, many of us who model the steam era are geezers whose numbers
dwindle significantly every year. The majority of modelers of every
age tend to model what they remember from their childhood and
adolescence, so there's an inevitable shift in emphasis away from the
steam era toward more recent periods of railroad history. It's no
accident that manufacturers like Walthers have largely shifted focus
to modeling freight cars of the 1960s and later, where there are many
more possibilities for multiple paint and lettering schemes, not to
mention a younger clientele.

None of this is any reason for crying the blues; for us steam era
modelers, this truly is the golden age in terms of what's available.
But much of it is only available in resin, and that's not going to
change appreciably. In fact, many of the resin models are going to
go away as suppliers like Al and Patricia Westerfield and Martin and
Patricia Lofton finally take their belated and richly earned retirement.

Speculation fests, to use Bruce's aptly chosen description, may be
harmless, but they're also largely a waste of time. Instead of
sitting around making pie-in-the-sky lists, maybe we'd be better off
going to the workbench and building some of the kits we already have.

Richard Hendrickson

--- In STMFC@..., richtownsend@... wrote:

Sheesh. I can't believe anyone even has to ask this question. We (I) need Enterprise GS gons. C&S and several other roads.

What, might I ask, was wrong with the ones done already? Both Detail Associates and Red Caboose did both the composite and all steel Enterprise cars as used by UP and SP, RC even did the alternate chain door mechanisms (as opposed to the patented "link" mechanism). There's no good reason to invest in tooling if no one buys the models that are already produced.

Dennis

I can't speak for "Eastern" roads, but can vouch for CN having quite a few Enterprise GS gons (a thousand or more?) in 36', 40', and 48' versions.

Steve Lucas.

Bruce and friends,

As long as were beating dead horses, how about the 8K and 10K AC&F type
7 (?) high walkway tank cars. I especially want a couple of the the 10K
size. They are WP signature cars.

Kind regards,


Garth Groff

Bruce Smith wrote:

On May 28, 2010, at 1:09 PM, richtownsend@... wrote:

Sheesh. I can't believe anyone even has to ask this question. We (I) need Enterprise GS gons. C&S and several other roads.

Richard Townsend
Lincoln City, Oregon

What do you mean "we" kemosabe? <G>

I love these speculation fests... Gons can be a bit more of a difficult sell - any eastern roads with Enterprise gons?

I would also think that the following might be good if someone were looking for projects:
- I second the notion of the GATC tank car
- UTLX X-3 (as I doubt I will ever get enough of Martin's kits done)
- Harriman Standard 40'10" SP/UP flat cars
- 1921/22 and 1927/28 FGE/WFE reefers (as built, not the modified IM car)

Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/index.pl/bruce_f._smith2

"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
__
/ &#92;
__<+--+>________________&#92;__/___ ________________________________
|- ______/ O O &#92;_______ -| | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ |
| / 4999 PENNSYLVANIA 4999 &#92; | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||
|/_____________________________&#92;|_|________________________________|
| O--O &#92;0 0 0 0/ O--O | 0-0-0 0-0-0

Sheesh. I can't believe anyone even has to ask this question. We (I) need Enterprise GS gons. C&S and several other roads.





Richard Townsend
Lincoln City, Oregon

Victor and friends,

Yes, we need a General American 46' GS gondola, which is available in N-scale, but not HO. The car I'm thinking of was used in large numbers by the D&RGW and less so by the WP (but with different gate mechanisms, but I could live with a D&RGW car lettered WP). They were signature cars for both roads.

AFAIK, all the D&RGW 40' 12-panel 10'2" IH boxcars had Duryea underframes, but it is true that they were built in several lots over the years and differed in doors, roofs and ends. These are neat cars, and visually taller than the 10' IH cars of the SP and GN.

Kind regards,


Garth Groff

ealabhan0 wrote:

Victor,
As a "signature" western freight car, how about a correct D&RGW 12-panel Pressed Steel Car Co. boxcar with straight side sill? Unfortunately, they weren't built in that large number, plus the Rio Grande bought several lots with different prewar and postwar ends, Superior and Youngstown doors, even some with Duryea UF, so it would take someone with far more knowledge of the Rio Grande than I to suggest the most-common car (or with the greatest number of paint schemes) to be a viable plastic model. (It still irks me to see Intermountain GN 12-panel boxcars with incorrect prewar Youngstown doors because they were too cheap to tool a IYSD for these postwar 10ft IH boxcars (not to mention the ends)).
Another signature car is the GN's Pressed Steel Car Co. GS gondola(and possibly other roads like the D&RGW, IIRC?). There's also the SP G-50-9/-12 GS gons like the '50s Ulrich zamac model.
I'm still hoping for a plastic 8,000 and/or 10,000 gal GATC-built tankcar, much more common a prototype than Athearn's '50s-crude model of the GATC 12,500 gal tankcar (which in itself could be a great SP/UP signature car if only Athearn were to upgrade and correct the model). I won't reopen the debate about a "typical" 1950s 40ft plugdoor reefer since I'm fine with Stan Rydarowicz's conversion kits for the varied BREX/WFEX/FHIX/WHIX/NX (and PFE, etc.) reefers...
Dave Sieber, Reno NV

An ACR pattern car comes to mind....

Jerry Glow

What other large quantity signature item freight cars could we ask for in built up form for the transition era? Maybe from a western road like the Santa Fe?

Victor Baird
Fort Wayne, Indiana