I will admit I bought it on impulse because it looked nice and seemed to fit. Somethings I research and others I wing it. I am finding the prototypical to manufactures may or may not mean correct or it may just mean nicer looking.
The one post above hit it on the head:
The Proto in Proto 2000 means that a real railroad had a rolling stock item that was indeed "similar" in Walthers' opinion, to the model offered. In some cases a model is exactly correct for only ONE lot of cars on ONE particular railroad, but for sales reasons, they are painted in every single paint scheme that is deemed "close enough".
I just bought a beautiful Proto 2000 Rio Grande baggage car. It is indeed close to one they received secondhand, but windows are different and roof vents are different.
In 65' mill gondolas, the Athearn offering is a nice car, but it IS a Santa Fe car, correct for several lots received by ATSF from the late 1930's until the early/mid 1950's. That means it is NOT correct for any other railroad. You can find "similar" cars, with a "similar" side profile, that might be welded instead of riveted, or might even have been produced by the same manufacturer as ATSF's. At a distance, they look pretty close, but they are actually different cars. In particular the Southern version offered by Athearn looks great, but available photos online reflect that it was indeed a different car. One is going to find that with most manufacturers' offerings.
Only a few manufacturers are sticking to exactly prototypical freight cars and paint schemes, but then they are limited run items and can be difficult to find.
John
For what it's worth, its usually best to check out a model "before" buying rather than buying and hoping it matches a real freight car. More often than not, models do not match anything real, but sometimes they are similar or stand-in's. Of course whether that is good enough is up to the buyer.
By way of example, I was seeing photo's of 1970's D&RGW freight trains with what appeared to be a Great Northern box car matching a model recently offered in HO by Fox Valley models. I was very interested in buying it, but decided to look up that freight car and number series on FallenFlags and RailCarPhoto' websites to make sure it was a match.
It turns out the Fox Valley GN model was only a "stand-in". The real freight car had a different side-sill shape was built with a roof walk and full height ladders. The model represented a freight car built after roof walks were banned and had no roof walk supports and low ladders.
Is this a deal breaker? For some maybe, for others, it's "close enough" - it must be because it's largely sold-out. My feeling is I've got a bunch of freight cars now and not an unlimited budget, so with only so much money to spend, at this point I prefer to buy models that are a close match rather than a stand-in. There are plenty of models still out there that I don't own that do match real freight cars, so I've decided to pass on the GN box car by Fox Valley models and concentrate on the close match models.
Thankfully we have rescources on the interent which help us vett models before buying - those resources don't always have enough photo's to be sure, but they do help. I wasn't sure about the Atlas 50' plug door box car in Penn Central paint, but a PC fan with a freight car book was able to confirm number series and match even though I couldn't find any photo's of that number series. The Atlas PC car was/is a NYC PC repaint.
In the past, I bought models a lot more frequently without checking first if they really matched a real freight car. One such example is a Western Pacific NACC 50' box car. I bought it over 10 years ago, but never did check it out until recently. I could not find an exact Match, and hey, this was a Genesis box car too! Disappointingly, it is not a direct match. Rob Spangler (WP modeler) confirmed that Genesis NACC WP car was a "stand-in". The car was similar to, but not a match, of a WP box car, which was built with a roof walk (similar to the Fox Valley GN car example). The model represented a car built after roof walks were banned and had half height ladders and no roof walk supports. I don't have nearly enough WP cars for my 1970's theme, so I'm keeping it as a stand-in, at least until I have a lot more correct WP cars.
Of course modeling a RR does involve some compromises but generally these days I avoid buying "stand-in" models new if I can help it.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Mike that helps a ton!!! Thank you! That picture shows the car within 1 year of service date in Denison if I read that correctly. That gives me a lot to go on. The car pictured is still red but has been renumbered so I am going to look in that BN series to find things.
Thanks again
Robert
Found something interesting. Using this link from the Friends of the BN,
http://www.fobnr.org/bncarlist/bncarlist5.htm
Scroll down a little more than half way, on the columns on the right, you'll see MKT gondolas original numbers, and on the left the BN number. Use those BN numbers to search. Such as this one,
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2472141
The right number of ribs, etc., as the Walthers car. There are more, check it out.
Mike.
EDIT: MKT car # 43788 would be BN 568138
My You Tube
Following what Jeff said in his post, there are 2,530 BN gondolas in rrpicturearchives. 26 pages. I suppose if you wanted to, and needed the exact car, you might go through all of these.
I think I would use the "close enough" approach. I've made lots of compromises modeling WC rail cars, and comparing what is on the market, painted and lettered for the WC, verses pictures of the actual car.
May have found somthing
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3805526
Actual Thrall gondola from 1967 build.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=771483
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3784453
52 ft. but lets me look down inside
The July 1974 issue of the Official Railway Equipment Register shows MKT 43750 to 43828 to be gondolas with an outside length of 72'2" and an interior length of 65'6". It has a note for this series that (at that time) they were leased to the BN and were to be treated as if marked with BN markings. All communications including reportings of miliage, per diem, etc, were to be sent to BN.
Jeff
There was a review of this model in the April 1998 issue of Model Railroading. And some discussion on MFCL. See below:
For MKT, the model is a "sort of" for MKT 43750-43849 built October 1967 through January 1968. For example, the rib spacing versus the taper on the bottom of the sides. I can't find any photos. So it appears you're dealing with the concept of "close enough or not". I would think most people would believe it a match at first glance.
The model is best as D&RGW 30800-30824:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2866472
VERY close to CNW-132600-132799. CNW 137200-137395 are also potential candidates for examination.
For MILW 93800-93849--sorta very close--variation in the taper on the bottom of the side posts and end corrugations.
It appears that each of the above were "variations on a theme".
Ed
Mike that is what I was thinking. It may be the Tyco 4015 markings of the Walthers Proto line. So much for the "Exquistite Prototype-Specific Detailing", That would make this car just another generic example of the fantasy world of model railroading. I can not tell you how many of this things I see out there. At least this one is close. For a minute I thought I might have to run it behind my AT&SF C-liner I use to clean track with. LOL! The car seriously though is a beautiful car.
Another thought, Rmax, the Walthers model is of a 65' mill gondola, as built by the Thrall Company. That's the "prototype" part, as the model has the correct dimensions of the Thrall car. It doesn't mean that it is a model of a particular car that the MKT had.
Read the MRR review that Dschmitt linked in his post.
Thanks Mike,
I looked there and found cars most pictured in the 80's. I also tried http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/mkt/katy.html with limited success. I did break out my loupe and looked at the consolidated stensil and it looks like the car was serviced in Denison in June of 76. So no telling what shape a 9 year old car would be in except probably bad. I did find one sort of like it full of scrap steel which is what I was expecting. Really a strange problem. A car built in 1967 with markings from 1976 in a state of as new condition that usually would be worked very hard. Oh and no pictures of said object in the wild.
Have you checked out rrpicturearchives? Here is the list of gondolas, maybe there is one that matches the Proto model.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=MKT&cid=6
DSchmitt wrote the following post 7 hours ago:
Thank you that is the one! The car number seems to not exist in that series. I thought that maybe under some other road. The car is Barriger red and I can not find anything in red or Whitman green. I did not find any information if the MKT renumbered a series. In fact I never realized there was so little information on MKT rolling stock. So where did Walthers get the prototype information? I would like to know a few things like if the Katy actually had these? What was hauled in them and where they used them? If a renumber occured when?. The reason I bought the thing is just that I like gondolas and it was marked for the MKT. The shop that I bought it at had it reduced and I just liked it. The build date and the paint scheme would place it in my time frame for modeling. The MKT hauled stone to scrap steel in gondolas but they could also haul anything in a pinch. I'd just like a picture of the real one to use for reference.
Found this model on EBAY (different road #)
https://www.ebay.com/p/?iid=201699669523&lpid=82&&&ul_noapp=true&chn=ps
Model Railroader review
http://mrr.trains.com/news-reviews/staff-reviews/2014/11/walthersproto-ho-scale-65-foot-thrall-mill-gondola
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Please contribute more information:
What is the "kit" number?
What are the reporting marks? As in, what are the car numbers?
When you did your research, what other kit numbers did you turn up? What other paint schemes (say, other than "red")?
When you ask a question like this, you should display as much information as you can.
I just bought a Proto 65ft. mill gondola in the MKT red scheme. Supposedly this is taken of the prototype and is prototype specific. Problem is I can not find any pictures of the prototype or information on it. Any help would be appreciated.