Hi Jace; Of the cars you mention, several have been available in non-brass versions in S. The MILW ribsided cars and B&O Wagon top boxcar have been (and I think still are) available from Lehigh Valley Models as wood and card kits. One version of the N&W hopper was made by Kinsman. The X-29 was offered as an epoxy cast kit by @#$% Trainstuff under Wayne Pier. More recently, Jim King offered the B&O round roof car as resin kit, with more accurate detail than the old Custom Brass version, and S Helper is doing the N&W hopper in plastic.
Pieter E. Roos --- On Mon, 11/8/10, JGG KahnSr <[email protected]> wrote: <SNIP> > My long-standing thesis is that there are at least a > half-dozen distinctive prototype freight cars which were > routinely interchanged during the steam/early diesel era so > many of us favor, and that a serious modeler of that period > ought to have at least one each: MILW ribside, B&O > wagontop, PRR X29, N&W peak-end twin hopper, and, of > course, the GLca (others would occur to me if I thought a > bit longer). A much shorter list than the long-running > series Ted Culotta has done in RMC, but probably sufficient > for smaller operations. > > As I was suggesting, these were hard enough to find in O > scale: ribsides were made in kit form many years ago by > Lobaugh and Graceline (embossed card sides) and more > recently in urethane bodies by Ted Schnepf; Ted also has > released a wagontop in urethane and Weaver is promising a > mass-market one later this year (years ago Walthers and > Lobaugh offered wood kits for a slightly different class); > FINALLY Atlas paired with Middle Division to produce > mass-market models of the X-29 and H-21 (Walthers had a wood > and lead casting kit many years ago, and Des Plaines offered > a very limited run of urethane kits for the former). > IMP imported both the N&W hopper and a wagontop from > Japan in the 1950's, but both need work to look right, and > Ambroid/QC offered a nice wood and whitemetal kit (actually > also offered in S scale--I was able to buy one at Duluth), > and many, many years ago RailCraft had a semi-kit produced > in Missouri. That's it. Everything else for > these very common cars, even in O scale, means expensive and > often hard to find brass. > > The reason I have taken so much band-width is really not > unrelated to S scale; if these are so hard find in O > scale--which is what, ten times the market of S scale? > Twenty times? Fifty times? Some of these have > been offered in S but so far as I can tell, all as brass > imports. One cannot blame the manufacturers when the > market is still so small. If S scale were my primary > interest, life would be even more difficult if I had to find > examples of these very common prototypes for a > representative railroad model. I guess I'm glad I > don't, and I really don't have a good solution to this > problem, just stating what I see as a problem. > > And closing the circle on this, I'd agree that serious PRR > modelers would want at least a few GLa's, but I'm not so > sure the rest of us feel the same sense of urgency. > > Jace Kahn > > General Manager > Ceres & Canisteo RR Co./Champlain County Traction Co. ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
