After looking over recent postings on the Walthers Passenger Car Kits posting, this reminded me of the Herkimer Car Works/OK Engine metal passenger car kits and r-t-r's.
Again specific prototypes offered in Budd and ACF types and also availabliity to do custom punch out for customer on any window, door and or combination.
Run Eight After looking over recent postings on the Walthers Passenger Car Kits posting, this reminded me of the Herkimer Car Works/OK Engine metal passenger car kits and r-t-r's. Again specific prototypes offered in Budd and ACF types and also availabliity to do custom punch out for customer on any window, door and or combination.
Still around, but detail is poor, rolling quality poor. I built a few and superdetailed them as an experiment years ago, dropped any plan to build a whole train.
Sheldon
Herkimer only did/does smooth top corrugated-side cars. So they can't be Budd.
Mantua did some corrugated-side cars with Budd-style roofs.
And a company named Kusan also did some smooth top corrugated-side cars.
All the above had bodies made from aluminum extrusions. The Herkimer (originally Kasiner) came as nominal 60' or 80' cars.
I think the Mantua were 60', but I'm not sure.
The Kusan were a nominal 70'.
A long time ago, I compared the cross-section of my Kasiner and Kusan with other passenger cars that I trusted, and the metal cars came up as being wrong.
As far as I know, if any of these cars were copied off of a specific prototype; it was an accident. If anyone has proof to the contrary, please share.
I still have mine (5-6 of the Kasiner, and 10 of the Kusan). They don't really match up, so running them together isn't going to look very nice. And neither match up to any other cars.
I still have a fantasy of polishing them up like mirrors and running them around once in awhile. I expect they'd look very much like a freshly washed real one. At least to my eyes. And to any kids that happened to be observing.
Ed
Ed, they don't have any photos, and yes the original Kasiner/Herkimer cars were all smooth tops.
But they now say they have a Budd car?
http://www.okengines.com/products.shtml
Many of the window arrangements are correct or close, but all the other details are generic and crude.
Sheldon,
I found these catalog pages, which certainly say they've got new extrusions. Neat.
http://www.okengines.com/pdf/catalog1.pdf
http://www.okengines.com/pdf/catalog2.pdf
The Mantua cars were 60' but many years ago when Mantua was still in Mantua NJ one of the local PRR modelers in Newark Del. contacted them and discovered that the aluminum extrusions for bodies came in a 8' long length which Mantua then cut down. Also the windows were punched out at Mantua, So a deal was struck where a number of bodies were cut at a scale 85' length and no window punchouts were made allowing a few modelers to build a PRR Congressional back in the mid 1970's . Lots of drilling and filing to get the windows correct !! Cars still used the plastic end caps from Mantua. --- Ken
Wow! So neat. I would surely like to see THAT train someday.