I've seen BLI offer several different versions of these coaches. Did they offer other types of cars with this line such as express cars, diners, or sleepers or was it limited to the P70 coaches?
According to the BLI website, they only have the P70 in coach form. They offer a multitude of versions of the car.
The PRR had over 1,000 P70 and variants on their roster over the years. The first one came out of the Altoona shops in December of 1907. Many lasted well into the Penn-Central era and even later in commuter service. After WWII many P70s were rebuilt with wider windows, rounded arch roofs and various seating configurations.
They are coaches, as in high density coach seating. Years later some were outfitted with better and less densely spaced seating, air conditioning (the R in the designation denotes "refrigeration") in 1935, two cars were modified to include small snack area at one end of the car.
So, the P70 is a coach and never was anything but a coach. If you are looking for head-end, dining or sleeping cars you'll have to look at Walthers or Bachmann for those varieties.
Good Luck, Ed
I just got 4 of these BLI coaches. They aren't cheap, but are very nicely done with a lot of detail - much more than the Walthers or Bachmann cars. The interiors are lighted. They have very free rolling trucks. They're long, so wider curves are better. And they have flared steps by each door, so you need a little extra room for clearance. They track through my single track pony bridge, but one car came off the track slightly, the steps caught on a bridge strut and caused an ugly derailment.
Lefty
I'm very fond of the BLI P70 coaches. They just plain worked straight out of the box.
With Bachmann's P70s, I ended up putting in quite a bit of work to body-mount their couplers and to get them to run without wobbling.
I'd be delighted if someone would release BLI-quality modernized P70s with arch roofs and porthole lavatory windows- those are the ones I remember riding on various excursions in the 1970s and 1980s. Eastern Car Works had flat kits for at least one flavor of the modernized cars, but I don't see them turn up very often.
-Fritz Milhaupt, Publications Editor, Pere Marquette Historical Society, Inc.http://www.pmhistsoc.org
I bought a boatload of Bachmann heavyweight coaches from Trainworld and what looked to be a clearance price. I thought they would be good for my fleet of commuter coaches. Unfortunately, I couldn't get them to stay on the track after body mounting the couplers. I got tired with fiddling with them and now they are scenic items as filler in my coach yard. They don't actually go out on mainline.
I have no experience with the newer Bachmann passenger cars which have a high end price. I would hope that with what they charge for them now, they have upgraded them to perform better but I'll never know. When I buy shoddy merchandise from a company, I ususally don't give them another chance. The only thing I ever liked from Bachmann was their Spectrum line of steamers. I have three of their Consolidations and a couple more. Since they have now merged that with their regular line, I have no way of knowing if I would get a quality product from them.