HO 8 inch dome observation

[Anonymous]

Back in the early 1980's when I was a kid, I got a short 8 inch HO dome observation car with plastic interior seating. Now that I'm old (35) I'm getting back into model railroading, I've been looking for these shorter cars which take turns easier...but can't find the manufacturer, does anyone have any ideas? they were pretty accurate in design to the California Zephyr corrugated dome observations....Darren [e-mail]

[Anonymous]

If your talking brass, the cars were imported by Tenshodo, if plastic, have no clue. Models could also by some old Herkimer lines models.
Ch

[Anonymous]

Sounds like an Athearn streamlined car to me.

[Don Gibson]

I agree.
The Athearn 70' dome car was really the only one being sold. The 60' shorties (Tenshodo) (OK/Herkimer) were metal and would have been approx. 6" long, and I don't remember if they ever HAD a dome .The "Plastic Interiors" suggest AHC/ Rivarossi, which were longer .

The first car I remember with a CZ like dome was Con Cor and had straight (flat) sides, which the CZ did not have. The popular Athearn was modeled after the Santa Fe 'Pleasure Dome'. it was the first 'Dome' car, dating from the early 50's,and had distinctive all-flat panes.

To summarize: With corregations, I suspect it was the Athearn - which is still available today. These can be made into very decent cars by getting rid of the Talgo trucks, and body mount KD couplers using JayBee pads. As I remember, I sawed off the talgo arm on the truck and replaced the wheels since good trucks cost more than the car, still. It's the trucks and wheels that do the work as the body is only a painted piece of plastic.

[Anonymous]

I agree with Don--it's most likely Athearn. But the Athearns did not come with interiors. Perhaps they were ConCor or someone like that.

[BR60103]

There were some 8" stainless steel coaches in plastic made by Tri-Ang (now Hornby.) These usually were lettered for CPR or CNR. They had coarse wheels and a large toy coupling. I think they included a dome-obs.
Some of the line (I know the RDC) were imported to the USA with norn-hook couplings.

[jkeaton]

Tri-ang's 8" stainless steel coach line included a dome-obs (did only the California Zephyr and Canadian Pacific have these?). They turn up occasionally on eBay. The most common paint scheme was the same colours as CP's original Tuscan letter board scheme, but with "Transcontinental" in flowing script where the "Canadian Pacific" is on the real thing. The window count was quite good on these, but the letterboards were very deep. They generally came with the standard Hornby British coupling (hook and loop).

[StillGrande]

I had some older Bachman Amtrack cars with interiors which looked similar to the Athearns (had them too). Got rid of all of them last year, and I don't remember what year I got them, but I had them for a while.

Tyco also put out an 8" set of passenger cars, some with domes. They had the paper interiors and were lit to show people in the windows rather than interiors.

[Anonymous]

8 inches long? DOme car? Sounds like the old Mantua Shorties to me.

James

[espeefoamer]

Athearn dosen't make a dome observation.I recall seeing the car you describe in old catalouges ,but I don't know who made it.

TO jkeaton: The Wabash had dome observations.