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I used to buy tyco rolling stock to "fit" my train set in the late 70's I was a child then and plastic horn and hook couplers were the rule. The track was flat so it was not revelant what kind of grades. I recall switching from Tyco after my big brother exposed me to the "good stuff" He was showing me Athearn, Varney, Cox and others that were quite good quality at the time. Most of my stock was the Kaybee toy store variety. Back in those days they actually sold trains in HO scale at Toys R Us, Kaybee etc The LHS was for those who understood such things as PFM (Pacific Fast Mail, Kaydee couplers etc..) I have a Intermountain Western Maryland AAR steel boxcar that was RTR. That car was very expensive at $26.00. However, it is a very good car in any train I want to put it with. It does not derail, break details etc. In general that car sorta behaves itself and does not attract attention. (derailments etc) That one boxcar sparked a desire to tweak my Athearn Blue Box boxcars to higher levels of performance. Some of the cars have bad underframes which can easily be replace and correct that "lean" Others have wheels and trucks that just plain causes trouble everywhere they go. They are being replaced with P2K Wheels and trucks (Trucks only for the worst offenders) Of course Kaydee couplers all around. .015 shims are applied as necessary to keep the couplers at a height. The trip pins are bent up slightly to stay out of switches, frogs, crossovers etc etc. In short I will continue to work these Athearn cars until they achieve the performance equal to that Intermountain WM boxcar. Eventually all cars in my fleet will be able to run just as well. The next thing I look at is weight. A 40 foot car in HO should weight at least 4 ounces. Ten United States Coins in the penny denominations = 1 ounce. A 50 foot car gets 5 ounces gross weight. If I weigh down the light RTR or Kits, they will stay on the track and perform like they should. Really "massive" rolling stock such as the Athearn RTR heavy duty flat with load tend to get careful treatment as they sometimes dont get along with other cars on a 3.5% grade with a 23" radius curve on it. I think it is more of a engineer issue. In the end I hope that whatever train I put together departs and arrives in the same conditions without incident. I refuse to rest until the rolling stock meets these issues. It is alot of fun on the workbench with some of the more challenging cars. There you have it. I am not so big on fine detail, I do enjoy them. But I prefer function over form any time. That pretty little boxcar with all the trimmings aint worth nuttin if you cannot roll it down the rail in the train from A to B without incident.
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