So back to the mail catcher. Gravity would have had the hook be down but tere was nothing to prevent one from being put in the wrong position because I doubt they were always secured, That being said the trouble is they had three errors that led to the problem. Windows slightly lower than most, grab a bit too long and the shape of the hook being not so wide. Three minor errors adding up to something that is wrong, just common sence wise.
rrinker NEW isn't new as in "brand new". NEW is New Empty Weight which is applied when the car is reweighed. A brand new just out of the shops car will have a BLT and NEW date matching, but as the car is in service, the NEW date changes but the BLT date won't. In fact it's probably not all that realistic to run a car with a 1930's BLT date in a 1950's setting with the NEW date also still in the 30's. This is how I came to give away 2 cars out of an Athearn 6 pack, they all had BLT dates fitting my era, but two of them had NEW dates in the 70's. --Randy
NEW isn't new as in "brand new". NEW is New Empty Weight which is applied when the car is reweighed. A brand new just out of the shops car will have a BLT and NEW date matching, but as the car is in service, the NEW date changes but the BLT date won't. In fact it's probably not all that realistic to run a car with a 1930's BLT date in a 1950's setting with the NEW date also still in the 30's. This is how I came to give away 2 cars out of an Athearn 6 pack, they all had BLT dates fitting my era, but two of them had NEW dates in the 70's.
--Randy
That's not *quite* right.
While it's true that the BLT and NEW date could be *slightly* different, if the car was say completed near the end of one month but not actually initially weighed to finish the stencilling until the next month, neither of those dates can change.
"NEW" is **only** used for the initial weighing at the builder.
If the car is reweighed and the data changes the weigh date is restencilled, but the "NEW" is also *replaced* with a code representing the railroad/shop that did the weighing and it will no longer have the "NEW" stencil. (For example, the "NEW 8-58" gets fully painted over and replaced with "AC 5-62")
Also note that at one point cars were required to be regularly re-weighed every 4? years or so (this was later relaxed), so a car built in the 1930s would be highly unlikely to still have a "NEW" weigh date in the 1950s, but should have a re-weigh date with a RR shop code within 2-4 years of the target date to really be accurate.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The "new" date and the "built" date are two different beasts. But it cannot be new before it was built.
I might have a computer that was built in 2014, but it is still "new" when I take it out of the box and turn it on for the first time.
You will find this to be true when you buy the cheaper computers in the catalog.
Amber Waves here in Richardton builds bins, they have a yard full of bins. They have been there all year. I asked Ambrose why he kept on building more bins. He said he wanted to keep his empolyees working and that the price of steel was low right now. So a bin built in 2015, will be a "new" bin in 2016 when he delivers it to you. His warranty on the product begins running when he delivers it.
I suppose that freight cars could be built ahead of demand. But the stncils...
The car might be built in 1936 but the brake pads were new in 2014. Gotta know what you are looking at, and what you are looking at may not have been stenciled correctly because the stencil was applied by a person who might not know what it is that is new and where he is supposed to put that number.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Although I don't have a picture to attach, a couple of years ago I bought a Walther's NYC 40 ft gondola which had different dates for the "new date" and "built date". Mistakes are common when model's are mass produced on a contract basis.
hon30critterPutting grab irons over the mail bag catcher is just plain . It is good for a chuckle though!
Don't 'cha know? When the mail grabber is turned up like that it is for catching AIR Mail!
I had to check out my Rivarossi RPO but mine is from the first run so there are no grab irons attached. The mail hook is very flexible, though, so I'm sure it is a simple matter of flipping it to the outside of the grab. Maybe they figured fewer would get damaged in transit that way.
I have a 1938 Century lounge car from MTH that has a door where it isn't supposed to be—but for the most part it will go unnoticed since I rarely break the consist apart and the full-width diaphragms hide the end door. Overall, the MTH cars are very well done, and the heavyweights are, too.
I seem to recall that the entire first run of the MTH Century Hudsons had the stripes on the tender way too high and didn't match the stripes on the cars. They did a "recall" and fixed them but that must have been a real headache.
Regards, Ed
Ulrich
Begs the question of who did the design? Or perhaps, who didn't follow the design?
I'm still chuckling about the mail catcher. I'm almost tempted to buy one just to see if anybody ever notices.
Hope you are doing well,
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Hornby and Atlas are importers, not manufacturers. Manufacturing and assembling is done in China - by people who no nothing about the prototype.
JW:
Putting grab irons over the mail bag catcher is just plain . It is good for a chuckle though!
The difference that I see between jecorbett's complaint about the gas pumps and the mail catcher debacle is that, while the gas pumps may be oversize when compared to most pumps from that era, there is some evidence that they might be close to somewhat rarer prototypes. However, the mail catcher error matches absolutely nothing in the real world. Maybe it was designed by a committee at Hornby!
I do not want to hijack jecorbett's thread on the size of a gas pump "How can they get something this wrong". However, I noticed two other recent instances where a company which should know better just screwed it up. Of course, there might be many more examples.
My cases: Hornby now offers the ex-Rivarossi/ex-Walthers 60 foot "shorty" passenger cars. The big advantage over previous issues: the grab irons are installed. I don't mind that the grab irons (except for those on the roof) are not painted. However, the RPO displays a mind-boggling error: the grab irons/hand rails on the post office door are on top of the mail catcher arm, rendering the latter pretty useless.
My second case: the most recent run of Atlas HO H15-44/16-44 engines. Previous runs spotted a small lantern-like marker/classification light device which could show either red or green lights.
While this set-up might not have been prototypical, at least the shape of the lights was spot-on. In the newest run, these lantern-like lights (which had been lit by an LED) are replaced by a larger LED, which looks like an oversized fish bowl strapped to the engine.
JW