Model Railroader review of new Walthers 60ft Trainline(R) pass. cars

[Anonymous]

Did the Model Railroader magazine ever do a review of the new Walther's 60 ft Heavyweight Trainline series of Passenger cars? If not, has anyone else?
George

[twhite]

I haven't seen one, but I've got a set and they have droopy couplers. Other than that, they're really sweet.

[Anonymous]

You have a set? I thought that they weren't due until this November.
George

[twhite]

George--OOPS! I was thinking about the Walther's 'shorty' heavyweights that came out about six months ago. Baggage, mail, combine and coach. Come to think of it, Walthers marketed them as new Rivarossi. (wonder if the Trainline is a re-hash of the same thing, now that Walthers isn't marketing Rivarossi?)
Tom

[jrbernier]

About a year ago the 4-car sets starting becoming available. Then the Lima/Rivarossi problems came to a boil, and Walther quietly stopped listing follow-on sets or the individual cars.
From what I have heard, Hornby has picked up the line, and there may be some more car available again. I think the Trainline engine/passenger car sets and loose cars are just Walthers clearing out existing stock from the first run....

Jim Bernier

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Walther's 'shorty' heavyweights that came out about six months ago. Baggage, mail, combine and coach. Come to think of it, Walthers marketed them as new Rivarossi.

Tom, that is what I've been trying to find in the Wabash name.

Rivarossi had a "1920's set A which included a baggage express, combine, pullman and diner" which was listed in the Walthers catalog as #6884 but the only place I've found it so far was at Hobby Circle, which has a terrible track record in internet sales. I thought also that maybe these "new" Trainmaster 60 footers might be a rerun of one of the older Rivarossi sets. Or maybe they are some variation on the 1930 heavyweights that Walthers lists. That's why I thought I'd see if MR had done any review on this "new" Trainmaster set.
I'd really like to find some nice, shorter heavyweights to go with my new GP7.
George

[CNJ831]

jtbterri - From the content of your posts I think that you may be a little confused. The Rivarossi 1920's Wabash set A #6884 cars are full length (about 80 feet), while the Walther's Trainline series #700 sets are 60 footers. To my knowledge, these 60-foot passenger cars by Rivarossi AND Walthers Trainline are distinctly different from and unrelated to any previous cars in either company's line.

CNJ831

[Anonymous]

[quoteThe Rivarossi 1920's Wabash set A #6884 cars are full length (about 80 feet)]

[CNJ831]

jtbterri - In "theory" the undec 60-footers are to arrive mid to late November. However, with the Hornby take-over of Rivarossi I'm not quite sure how this might affect the Walthers contract for these cars. I'm waiting on some of these undecs as well.

Shorty passenger cars have a long history in our hobby and there were at least a few prototype shorty cars during the transition era as well . Back in the 1950's and 60's passenger cars of 60'-70' length dominated HO kits and RTR (full length cars generally came as craftsman kits). What Model Railroader termed "Bantam" sized layouts with 18-inch radius curves were the norm and these shorter cars looked an awful lot better on these curves than the more prototypical 80'-85' examples. Penn Line's original 60-footers probably had the longest continuous production run of any passenger car in HO history, although under several different manufacturer's names over the years.

CNJ831

[fmilhaupt]

The cars in the Walthers/Rivarossi four-packs from earlier this year, and the "Trainline" series cars Walthers lists in their 2005 catalog are from the same tooling.

The RPO and baggage are quite usable for Wabash cars. The RPO is nearly identical to a couple the Wabash used, and the baggage is a reasonable stand-in.

I picked up a couple of the four-packs with the idea of using the RPOs and baggage cars on my club's Wabash layout, but haven't quite decided what I'll do with the distinctly-C&NW combines and coaches. I've been thinking of perhaps building a series of freelanced branchline modules for my club's portable display layout; the combine would probably provide all the passenger service it would need.

[Anonymous]

Fritz I'm curious

QUOTE: I picked up a couple of the four-packs with the idea of using the RPOs and baggage cars on my club's Wabash layout

I assume you're talking about the Rivarossi 60 ft sets. I couldn't find any Wabash or undecorated sets. What did you choose to run on your layout.
George

[fmilhaupt]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jtbterri
I assume you're talking about the Rivarossi 60 ft sets. I couldn't find any Wabash or undecorated sets. What did you choose to run on your layout.
George

Yup, those are the ones. I bought a set of C&NW and a set of Southern. They're still on the project stack, since I'll be stripping them and repainting them- Fortunately, the Wabash scheme for the early 1960s is almost a simple "dip job" (blue body with a black roof). Mark Vaughan makes good decals for these.

After that on the project list are the coaches with the modernized Thermopane windows. Stan Rydarowicz sells castings for the new windows, to replace the windows from old Rivarossi Pullman bodies.

Once all of those are done, I'll tackle the major surgery project- kitbashing the Wabash's 70-foot baggage cars with arch roofs. It'll require rearranging Athearn sides and adding Bethlehem Car Works parts.

[CBQ_Guy]

Here's some undecs...

http://tinyurl.com/52t59

Hope this helps.