Just bought a Roundhouse 3 in 1 craft kit at a train show, paid $8.00, it is a 3/26' old timer "shorty' flat car kit, it's an amazing kit with many differnt options to construct various cars, I'm very pleased as it's my first Roundhouse kit- - - just when did Roundhouse quit making model kits and is there an equivalent company today making similar kits??
While I do not know exactly when Roundhouse kits went out of production, I believe Accurail is about as close to their product line as you will find today.
.
I certainly enjoy Roundhouse products, even today. My most recent picture on "Show Me Something" is of a Roundhouse Gondola.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
The 3 in 1 kits are an introduction to kitbashing. I made a couple of them. This is a flanger made from an old timer caboose. The kit also included a Jordan spreader and a snow crab
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
The basic flat car is still being made by Athearn.
Ed
I believe that Athearn (now Horizon) took over the Model DieCasting/Roundhouse line, and still offer many of their cars as r-t-r items. Most, if not all of MDC's line was kits, and especially, of course, the 3-in-1 kits. I doubt that Horizon would have these available in any form, though, as the whole point of the original was to make what you wanted from the parts that were included (along with whatever you had on-hand that would be appropriate, too).I never bought any of the 3-in-1 kits, but a friend gave me left-over parts from several of them, and I used some of them to create the not-yet-weathered foundation on this coal elevator...
...the powerhouse (with the smokestack) of this factory...
...the oilhouse at my locomotive shops...
...and doors for three railroad water towers like this...
The towers are heavy cardboard tubes, originally used for rolled paper, wrapped with .005" sheet styrene, with embossed river detail. They feed either Tichy standpipes, like the one at left, below, or kitbashed ones, at right...
Wayne
In 2004 Horizon Hobbies bought Athearn and Roundhouse (also called MDC). Shortly thereafter they stopped making kits - I don't recall the year. Accurail and Bowser make similar type kits, but do not replicate the Roundhouse line especially the pre WWI cars. In particular no one (AFAIK) makes similar passenger car or locomotive kits to what Roundhouse made.
Many of the kits can still be found at train shows under either the Roundhouse or Model Die Casting (MDC) name. However, they are getting scarcer - again especially passenger cars and locomotives.
Paul
Around here the cars you seem to find the most are the Pullman Pallace passenger car kits.
There are no where near as many Roundhouse/MDC cars as Athearn blue box kits at train shows.
River City Railroad still sells shake the box kits. Some are unpainted Project Car kits.
I use to buy the old time cars from them some years ago.
Around early 2000's I recall seeing a posting somewhere about them buying up old MDC stock.
It might have been in the Yahoo Groups, Early Rail Group.
I suspect they might have a company in China making the kits today. Thet rarely run out of some stock.
http://stores.ebay.com/RIVER-CITY-RAILROAD-RCR_36FT-OLD-TIME/_i.html?_fsub=174146619&_sid=287414219&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
I model the year 1910, so I own a lot of the Roundhouse/MDC 36 foot Old-Timers. I've found I can buy as many as I can carry for $5 or less per copy at local train shows. Love those older ones with the metal chassis, they are just right for the NMRA car weight recommendation, and are a great platform for scratchbuilding. I'm not a fan of the newer plastic chassis.
I upgrade the kits by using monofilement fishing line for the truss rods (looks like metal and is stronger than the thread), sometimes adding scale turnbuckles (not all truss rod cars had them) and adding Kaydee couplers, metal wheels, sometimes on different truck styles.
My pet peeve is the cast-on grab irons, not much you can do about them without re-painting the car. Back in the day, they came with separate grabs, and I have a few of those, but they are a rare find now-a-days.
Jim
hardcoalcaseso I own a lot of the Roundhouse/MDC 36 foot Old-Timers. I've found I can buy as many as I can carry for $5 or less per copy at local train shows. Love those older ones with the metal chassis,
I love them too. I buy them as I find them even though HO is not my primary scale.
hardcoalcase I model the year 1910, so I own a lot of the Roundhouse/MDC 36 foot Old-Timers. I've found I can buy as many as I can carry for $5 or less per copy at local train shows. Love those older ones with the metal chassis, they are just right for the NMRA car weight recommendation, and are a great platform for scratchbuilding. I'm not a fan of the newer plastic chassis. I upgrade the kits by using monofilement fishing line for the truss rods (looks like metal and is stronger than the thread), sometimes adding scale turnbuckles (not all truss rod cars had them) and adding Kaydee couplers, metal wheels, sometimes on different truck styles. My pet peeve is the cast-on grab irons, not much you can do about them without re-painting the car. Back in the day, they came with separate grabs, and I have a few of those, but they are a rare find now-a-days. Jim
rrebellIn the late 70's they made kits with individual grabs, thr grabs were just staples but with the pre-drilled hole you could use anybodys grabs. Properly done up kits looks pretty close to todays stuff, used A-line stirrups on mine and grant line turnbuckles.
I don't recall ever seeing those cars, but in the '70s, I was buying their modern (at that time) boxcars.I do recall the cast metal cars (one such gondola still in service on my layout) and the plastic 36'-ers with moulded-on grabirons. As I recall, those use 22" grabs, and I simply make my own, as I have few of those cars -wouldn't mind more, but don't see them too often, even at train shows.
Hi tatans:
I love the old Roundhouse 3 in 1 kits. I have built several of them and they can be made into fine models, and many of them are rather unusual too. It's too bad they were discontinued.
I get the impression that some of the respondants to your thread don't actually know what a '3 in 1' kit consisted of. We are not talking about a simple passenger car, freight car or caboose 'shake the box' kit. The 3 in 1 kits supplied you with some very basic components that could be built into three models per kit. However, there was a lot of scratchbuilding and kit bashing required to get the desired end results. For example, one fire fighting tank car came with a 36' freight car body, a 10,000 gal. tank car body and a metal tank car frame. To build the fire fighting car you had to cut the freight car and tank car bodies into several pieces, sandwich various parts together, and then add in your own styrene panels and platforms to complete the model. For the snow removal equipment, the modeller was required to form their own snow blades out of styrene or brass. You could add on as many details as your heart desired, but you had to make most of them yourself.
If you see one at a swap meet I strongly suggest that you grab it. Some of the kits aren't quite as interesting like the logging car kits, but others like the Jordan spreader kit or the snow crab kit are a lot of fun!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
When I got back into the hobby after 20 years, I discovered the 3 in 1 kits. I am thankful for them, as they steered me into scratchbuilding. As has been noted, the kits included various parts and pieces from the Roundhouse line, but it was their instructions that were the most valuable to me. Most included templates for the required additions in styrene and Plastruct pieces. Their materials lists were invaluable to me as I didn't have any of the required material on hand. I just brought the list with me to various hobby shops until I acquired the items I needed.
I used their plans to make the bucket, boom, boom turntable, etc. in the steam shovel kit as well as the Jordan spreader, snow dozer, snow crab, etc., learning all the time. They often included prototype photos, which were a great help to me as I didn't have any reference materials and of course this was before the Internet.
I think I've made most of the 3 in 1 kits, and kept on buying them wherever I could find them just to have their kit parts.
Sure glad I discovered the kits!
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
I think it's unlikely a hobby shop has a manufacturer in China making fake MDC / Roundhouse kits for them to sell today. More than likely they just have a lot of old stock they've accumulated. Athearn still makes many of the old MDC/Roundhouse cars under the Roundhouse or the "Ready To Roll" brand name. I'm sure their lawyers would be on someone making and selling fake ones in a second.
IIRC Roundhouse kits originally were metal kits going back to the 1940's or 50's. At some point they switched to plastic bodies, maybe in the 1960's? Anyway, cars like the two kinds of Michigan ore cars, 36' boxcar, reefer, and stockcar, wood and steel cabooses, etc. were in production for many decades, and I'm sure many unbuilt kits are still out there.
I have never seen unpainted project cars sold by MDC or Athearn.
Maybe they have a deal going with Athearn.
There must have been a considerable supply of old MDC stock when the company was sold.
It is going on about seventeen years now.
Once I ordered the MDC steamer boilers.
A few months ago some new items were popping up that I had not seen about four years ago.
I emailed them out of curiosity but never got an answer.
I built a Climax A based on one (or two!) of those kits that included the short flat car (see my avatar). These kits were awesome and included tons of spare parts that are great for other scratchbuilding or superdetailing projects. I still have a few kits on my "to-do" shelf. But I wonder what will happen when the used market totally runs out of these. I just can't see myself buying RTR items and just watch them run on my pike.
Simon
richg1998 I have never seen unpainted project cars sold by MDC or Athearn.
If you mean undecorated kits, MDC produced thousands and thousands of them over the years. Before maybe the 1990's, most model manufacturers decorating of cars wasn't very good. Many 'serious' modellers preferred to buy undec kits and paint and decal them so they looked better and were more prototypically decorated. Clover House dry transfer co. used to carry MDC undec. car kits in their catalogue, so you could order lettering sets and the cars to put them on all at one time.
I don't know offhand if Athearn produced undec Roundhouse kits after buying out Model Die Casting, but even if they didn't, there must still be thousands of old MDC (and Athearn) undec kits out there.
I would say again that I think the odds that Athearn agreed to have former MDC undecorated kits made in China and then shipped to one hobby shop and no one else in some sort of secret deal to be pretty small. Simpler answer is just that your hobby shop has a sizeable stock of old undec kits on hand.
Horizon hobbies does offer the old MDC/Roundhouse cars as RTR models now, but the old 3 n 1 kits will probably never happen again. I watch for the logging versions at train shows to purchase. Like most kits here in the USA they have gone the way fo the Dodo bird and train shows with estate tables of trains for sale is your best bet.(those are my favorite tables to flock to when I arrive at a show!!). I grew up to late, as pretty much everything new on the market is of little interest to me. I prefer older kits, craftsman and shake the box style, old early brass import steam engines and I even plan to use some true scale roadbed track on my layout once I get started. That is what I grew up wanting in the magazines, and what I enjoyed at the large local club that I was a member of. That layout was started the year I was born (1973) and recycled many items from the previous layout that predated me by many years. Mike the Aspie
Silly NT's, I have Asperger's Syndrome
richg1998I have never seen unpainted project cars sold by MDC or Athearn. Maybe they have a deal going with Athearn. There must have been a considerable supply of old MDC stock when the company was sold.
IIRC, the remaining stock from Roundhouse/MDC was acquired by this firm. Basically, it was all the spare parts, left overs from past runs, and other unpackaged stuff in the warehouse. Horizon wanted to deal only with sellable stock, not put together more kits when they bought MDC's asset's. That would account for undec items that otherwise would've only been found decorated. The parts that were then available were sometimes packaged as complete kits, depending on what was in the mix..
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
The instruction sheets for 3 in 1 kits can be found on hoseeker.com. There are even some there that are for kits that were never produced.
dlm
hardcoalcaseLove those older ones with the metal chassis, they are just right for the NMRA car weight recommendation, and are a great platform for scratchbuilding.
Hmmmm...
I never like the metal chassis kits. Keep in mind, these were already very old by the time they became mine, but the chassis always were very brittle, and usually warped. They would break when trying to correcr this.
Maybe I just had bad luck.
I put together one of the metal frame cabooses, didn't have any problem filing off the flash or anything. It actually went together pretty easily. It's not an accurate model, so I may never run it again, but it's in my inventory. Not sure how long it had been laying around at the hobby shop, but this place is famoud for having plenty of NOS, with the emphasis on OLD. I haven't been there in a coupld of years but I bet I can find some of the same stuff still there. Dusty boxes stacked high on dimly lit shelves (because he reduce the aisle size to squeeze move shelves in and now the lighting no longer aligns with the aisles).
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Horizon;s purchase of Roundhouse and Athern has been a disaster for the hobby. Inexpensive kits were the route that many used to enter the hobby and now they are almost gone. The hobby today is mostly aging baby-boomers including myself. Where are the young people --they're nowhere because they cannot afford the expense of entering the hobby. Model railroading is on the route to suicide. Active modelers increasingly old and few young modelers. Horizon shoulbe ASHAMED of how they are destroying this hobby by eliminating a (no THE) major sources of inexpensive kits.
Kit building has gone the way of shopping in the mall.
This thread will be merged into "This hobby is too expensive" thread. But, I agree with the thesis, but we have had recent threads where low priced Bachmann engines don't run at all, but if they did, they don't have the detail or the functions of engines in the $200+ range.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
dfdf1995 Horizon;s purchase of Roundhouse and Athern has been a disaster for the hobby. Inexpensive kits were the route that many used to enter the hobby and now they are almost gone. The hobby today is mostly aging baby-boomers including myself. Where are the young people --they're nowhere because they cannot afford the expense of entering the hobby. Model railroading is on the route to suicide. Active modelers increasingly old and few young modelers. Horizon shoulbe ASHAMED of how they are destroying this hobby by eliminating a (no THE) major sources of inexpensive kits.
Having been in this hobby since 1968, and having worked in this hobby from 1970 to 1980 as a hobby shop sales person and later as the manager of a train department in a hobby shop, respectfully I must disagree.
Adjusted for inflation, the average actual street price of RTR rolling stock offered by Horizon in the last decade under the Athearn Ready to Roll line, or under the revised Roundhouse line, is no more expensive than the kits were in 1968 or 1975.
This has never been an inexpensive hobby, it never will be.
The fact that young people may or may not be interested in this hobby has nothing to do with current costs. In fact much of the entry product offerd by Athearn, Bachmann, Walthers and others is better quality and again reasonably priced based on inflation, when compared to stuff like Tyco or Life Like in 1970.
I don't know how many young people are interested in model trains today, I don't care. It has always really been a hobby for moderately affluent men old enough to have the time and be able to spend the money.
In the early seventies a survey in Model Railroader put the average age at 34, it may well be older than that now, but not because of cost.
Read this forum a bit more, you will see a large percentage of people are simply not interested in building rolling stock from kits, age is not a factor in that choice, neither is price.
In a world were nearly everthing costs 10 times what it cost in 1968, even a $50 freight car is not that expensive. That equates to $5 back then. Much of the current Athearn line can be purchased for $25 - $35, or about $3 in 1968 dollars. I still have stacks of thoses blue boxes with those $2.98 prices printed right on them..........
Don't think my assessment of inflation is correct? In 1969 my father bought a new car for $3,450, anything comparable today will easily be $35,000 or more.
If anything is killing the hobby regarding young people, it is television, cell phones, video games, facebook, ........not the price of trains.
One last thought. I started in this hobby at the age of 10, with a nice, pretty serious layout built for me by my father. I have shared the details of my start in the hobby on this forum before, I will not repeat it all here again.
But in my junior high school, and in my high school which had over 3,000 students, there were only a hand full of us interested in trains or model trains.....that was the early 70's. And that was in a town with a world class model railroad club still in existance today. Look it up on the web or Youtube - Severna Park Model Railroad Club.
So while lots of kids may have a brief interest in a 4x8 platform and a Tyco train set, I'm not convinced any great number of them ever stayed with the hobby - then or now.
Sheldon
BigDaddyKit building has gone the way of shopping in the mall.
Why do people keep saying that?
Down here in Florida we keep building newer and bigger malls. They are booming.
Only a few in the center of the state in small towns where they never should have been built are looking anemic, but they are hanging in there.
ATLANTIC CENTRALSo while lots of kids may have a brief interest in a 4x8 platform and a Tyco train set, I'm not convinced any great number of them ever stayed with the hobby - then or now.
I am beginning to agree with you on this. I previously thought that train sets were the gateway to model railroading, but that does not seem to pan out.
Sure, we all had toy trains as kids, but something much different needs to happen to make you into a model railroader.
It isn't exposure to real trains, I almost never saw them growing up. I don't know what kicked off my passion for model trains, but it has been strong for 40+ years.
SeeYou190 BigDaddy Kit building has gone the way of shopping in the mall. . Why do people keep saying that? . Down here in Florida we keep building newer and bigger malls. They are booming. . Only a few in the center of the state in small towns where they never should have been built are looking anemic, but they are hanging in there. . ATLANTIC CENTRAL So while lots of kids may have a brief interest in a 4x8 platform and a Tyco train set, I'm not convinced any great number of them ever stayed with the hobby - then or now. . I am beginning to agree with you on this. I previously thought that train sets were the gateway to model railroading, but that does not seem to pan out. . Sure, we all had toy trains as kids, but something much different needs to happen to make you into a model railroader. . It isn't exposure to real trains, I almost never saw them growing up. I don't know what kicked off my passion for model trains, but it has been strong for 40+ years. . -Kevin .
BigDaddy Kit building has gone the way of shopping in the mall.
ATLANTIC CENTRAL So while lots of kids may have a brief interest in a 4x8 platform and a Tyco train set, I'm not convinced any great number of them ever stayed with the hobby - then or now.
Here in the most affluent suburbs of Baltimore, Washington and Philly, malls are dieing fast. They are empty gost towns with vacant stores and few customers.
But we have a big Amazon warehouse 10 minutes from here that delivers stuff the next day.
Just got word the SEARS store at the mall will be gone by the end of January.
I've only been to a mall about 3 times in the last three years.
ATLANTIC CENTRALI've only been to a mall about 3 times in the last three years.
I cannot remember the last time I went to a mall to buy something, but they are great destinations for indoor hiking and people watching.
There is a new two story massive mall called "UTC" in Sarasota, Florida. That is my current favorite to watch people. The mall in Brandon, Florida has always been magnificent, and so is the Westshore Mall in Tampa.
Sawgrass Mills in Fort Lauderdale is incredible, but it is just too big.
In Fort Myers we have the ancient Edison Mall where I hung out my the Record Bar in High School. It is still there, and still going strong.
In Tampa a couple of malls have closed, but they have been repurposed into office buildings.
The mall in Macon, Georgia is an empty disaster, but I think it just matches Macon, which is a city on a terrible down-swing.
Malls are going the way of the brick and morter hobby shops. The new "mall" and "hobby shop" is the digital one on your phone or tablet. With 24/7 availablity, many of the better ones having real time inventory so you KNOW if they have it in stock or not. Just as the kits like MDC/Roundhouse, Athearn Blue Box and many others have been replaced with RTR versions of the same cars at a much higher price. I for one haunt the train show estate tables looking for these kits. The kit building process, to me, is half the fun. Same goes for fine tuning older brass models. At the recent train show last weekend, a dealer had 2 of the old MDC/Roundhouse 2 truck Shay kits, unbuilt new in the box. Those are getting harder to find. Those are a big challenge to get to run well and these days, a PFM/United Shay is a much better buy from many points. Cheers Mike