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Good Freight Car Rolling Stock
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<p>I use Athearn Blue Box kits with Kadee 148 couplers and Proto 33" wheels.</p><p>I use Atlas rolling stock RTR whenever it suits me. Same goes for Intermountain and others. I found that some of these RTR items such as Tank cars are far superior to kit built items. Opening a kit today and being confronted with a million tiny parts isnt my cup of tea.</p><p>Roundhouse and Athearn was bought by Horizon, they are being re-issued as RTR with some good workmanship. Far better than I could do it from the older kits to be honest with you.</p><p>It is difficult to choose some RTR products when the entire month of advertisements and availible stock is stuffed with a Bigboy or a Gondola from 30 different makers. One gets burned out on these abundance of offerings of just one car type in rolling stock.</p><p>Sometimes one wonders if one makes a gondola of some quality, all the other rolling stock makers race to issue thier own version of the same gondola. Flooding the market with waves of specific items in specific roadnames...</p><p>I once brought some old items from my previous model railroading that were in storage for a long time. They were not up to par and some could not be upgraded, rebuilt to run today's kadee couplers, metal wheels etc. They were thrown out or stripped of useful parts and then thrown out.</p><p>If you still wish to get Varney or other items, use Ebay with caution, such items in apparent good condition and sometimes upgraded with good workmanship are availible there from time to time.</p><p>If it does not stay on the track, I use a stick on weight that is availible from the hobby shop. Just a little bit. I have tried pennies, lead shot and other solutions and those only created more trouble down the road when the plastics failed. In fact pure lead is not something good to have at home unless you are keeping a Remington 1200 fed.</p><p>I find it rather rare to add weight.</p><p>The biggest challenge is finding RTR rolling stock that matches your chosen era. Sometimes with more than two road numbers. I have 4 tank cars of the 11 thousand gallon variety each with a seperate number from Atlas. The problem was Atlas only ran two numbers at a time and I had to wait 5 years to get 4 different numbers.</p><p>Others will probably tell me of different solutions to remove numbers and decal your own, I find that RTR products are increasing easily damaged by some of the methods as if the Factory is deliberately building with materials that can be destroyed by alcohol, pine sol, brake fluid etc.</p><p>The problem is particularly bad with engines. When I want 4-6 engines of a like kind with 4-6 numbers Ive been confronted with only two numbers. So I just buy the two and no more unless another manufactor makes a run with different cab numbers. I only imagine the first producer of these engines have lost sales because they only use two numbers.</p><p>And finally but not last, I keep a note book, all of my engines are in that notebook with two digit cab numbers for DCC addresses. So when I inspect a engine at the hobby shop, I check against that list to see if that cab number is availible to be used without any modification or changes.</p><p>Eventually I will have to go to 4 digit addressing but I will never max out my DCC engine stack limit of 120 engines or so.</p><p>There is a HUGE amount of Transition Era products availible now.</p><p>Just dont get me started on the 9 dollar RTR outhouse I saw the other day.</p>
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