While the Rapido car is, like pretty-well everything they offer, very nicely done, and if you want a highly detailed model that's r-t-r, it's a good choice.
However, Accurail offers a pretty decent version for less than half the price. I bought a bunch of them, well before Rapido's existence, and simply shaved-off the cast-on grabirons on the cars' sides, replacing them with metal ones...
I left most of the cast-on ones on the end-ladders, but replaced most of the other individual ones on the ends. I also added scratchbuilt corner grabs on the roofwalk laterals, and added only rudimentary brake gear rigging, as the deep centresill tends to hide most of any underbody detail.
I lettered six of them for one of my freelanced roads, as shown above, but did a number of others, using decals and/or dry transfers to letter them for prototype roads, too, and all of them got the same detail upgrades.
Years before Accurail's version, I modified three doublesheathed boxcars from Train Miniature (these were low-height cars originally, much like the modified TM car shown below...
To make the cars appear higher, like the prototype USRA cars, I simply used my X-Acto to continue the scribing of the side sheathing onto the model's sidesills (which were, fortunately, in the same plane as the side-sheathing) then added strips of styrene to the bottom edges of the car to represent the new sidesills. I lettered the cars for a real railroad in my hometown, which had acquired 300 of the USRA cars from part-parent road NYC, early in WWII...
I also removed the original TM ends (part of the body casting), and replaced them with more prototypical ends from Tichy. The lettering was done using C-D-S dry transfers.
Theoretically, the cars are a bit too modern (as TH&B cars, at least) for my layout's late '30s era, but I'll keep 'em...one of the advantages of free-lancing.
Wayne
I think the only Rapido freight car I have is the 37 foot Meat reefer.
It is a very nice model. I also have an RDC-2 that is very nice.
Hopefully I will get three of their new Pennsylvania round roof boxcars in a year or so.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
That is next for me to buy. What do people think if their rapido they must be good.