So this is more of just a huge gripe than anything. Why the heck can't anyone make any Amtrak Surfliner cars?!?!?!?!?! I know that Walthers did an early version way back when but why.......I don't understand. Athearn and make Surfliner F59PHI in mulitiple forms including the Saftey specialty versions.....and now Bachmann can make the new Siemens SC-44 Charger that's also Surfliner.......
But no one can make a passesnger car? What the heck people. C'mon!I know Union Station Products makes a shell you can build. But they have been poor at best at getting back to me with email or phone call inquiries. And frankly I don't want to build. I want to just click, BUY on about 20 cars!
:( That was my most favorite part of living in San Diego was the Surfliners. Just want to recreate that. Got the locos......now just need cars!Athearn? Bachmann? Walthers? Anyone? *crickets*
Agreed, I wish there was a RTR offering for the Amtrak California and Pacific Surfliner cars. Maybe one day! Hopefully haha
http://www.haworthengineering.com/
~Excellency in the Details ~
I must admit, I had not heard of the Surfliner cars. I had to Google them.
It looks like American Z Line made them in 1:220 scale!
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Overland imported them in HO scale brass. A friend of mine has a 5-car set but you really don't want to know how much they go for these days...https://www.brasstrains.com/classic/Product/Detail/049087/HO-Brass-OMI-Overland-Amtrak-Surfliner-Coach-6400-Interior-Lighting
https://brasstrains.com/classic/Product/Detail/049095/HO-Brass-Model-Train-OMI-Overland-Amtrak-Surfliner-F59PHI-5-Car-Consist-Set
5150WS6 And frankly I don't want to build. I want to just click, BUY on about 20 cars!
I would'nt hold your breath, if I was you!
I say, get what double deck cars look close, and build a fleet!
Threads that rant about what no company has offered, always get to me. I'm really being kind in my response.
BUILD IT!
Mike.
My You Tube
I wonder if there's demand for a plastic Surfliner/California San Joaquin to sell well.
The HO Scale Surfliner Cars came out in 2000, while the San Joaquin cars came out in 1998. Both sets were brass, sold out quickly, and are extremely hard to get.
If there was any company that I would want to make the Amtrak Surfliner cars, that would be Kato. Their Superliner cars run well, and once you add kadee couplers with their adapter, they run on 24" radius with no issues. I discovered their coupler adapter for Kadee a couple years ago. Now I will work on getting rid of most if not all of my Walthers Superliner cars - once train shows come back...
Neal
5150WS6 So this is more of just a huge gripe than anything. Why the heck can't anyone make any Amtrak Surfliner cars?!?!?!?!?! I know that Walthers did an early version way back when but why.......I don't understand. Athearn and make Surfliner F59PHI in mulitiple forms including the Saftey specialty versions.....and now Bachmann can make the new Siemens SC-44 Charger that's also Surfliner....... But no one can make a passesnger car? What the heck people. C'mon!I know Union Station Products makes a shell you can build. But they have been poor at best at getting back to me with email or phone call inquiries. And frankly I don't want to build. I want to just click, BUY on about 20 cars! :( That was my most favorite part of living in San Diego was the Surfliners. Just want to recreate that. Got the locos......now just need cars!Athearn? Bachmann? Walthers? Anyone? *crickets*
Here is the thing, this is 2020, that means that if we look at the history of railroading in 10 year blocks of time, starting in 1900, that means there are 12 different "eras" for modelers to chose from.
In 1968 when I started in this hobby there were only 7 to choose from.
No one knows for sure, but it seems that as a percentage of the population, model railroading is not as popular as it was in 1968.
It is possible that the actual number of modelers today may not be any higher than it was then.
Number of modelers divided by number of possible eras, would suggest that there are far fewer pontential buyers for any one product than there were in 1968.
That would suggest that the number of people interested in the Surfliner is VERY SMALL.
This is a real problem for the manufacturers. In 1968 there were far fewer real trains to choose from when deciding what to make.
Example - I model 1954 in the Mid Atlantic - I will never buy a model of a Surfliner, or an F59PHI. I don't "collect" trains that do not fit my era and theme.
Just like some models I would want - it is unlikely that any model company will make accurate models of 1930's and 1040's B&O passenger cars that were created from old heavyweights in the B&O shops - there just are not enough people interested to invest in the tooling.
No offense, but I'm only slighly more informed than Kevin, I did remember seeing a picture or two of the Surfliners, but know nothing about them.
Save up, find one of those brass sets.........
Sheldon
Thanks guys. I'm sure it comes down to need and demand and it is probably really small. But as was stated, there are a couple offshoot lines of the cars that would also work....not just in the Surfliner scheme.
I have seen the brass versions but good gosh. I don't want have to sell a kidney to get a set of cars!
Kato would be my pic for cars also. They are going to rerun their Amtrak Superliners one of these upcoming months and I might try to get some extra to convert to the Surfliners possibly. I know Microscale have some decals available.....
And in response to you Mike, point taken and it goes both ways. You guys with endless time say 'just build it!" for everything not being built drive me just as crazy! (I'm being kind in my response too) ;) But for some of us, that's just not doable with life/family/work balance. Someday I would love to build a set. And as I mentionsed I looked into Union Stations versions which you do have to build, but I got zero response from them so I don't think it's an option anymore.
I guess it is mostly frustrating when some companies build locos for a line and nothing else. It's obviously because they were building the locos for other things and changing paint and decals is simple big picture wise. But that just leaves me wit Surfliner locos and no cars! LOL!
I'll keep looking and if nothing else will keep them on my ever growing scratch build build list!
Mike
How about some from Athearn Genesis?
https://youtu.be/Fu5O8tSooX8?t=313
lmsband How about some from Athearn Genesis? https://youtu.be/Fu5O8tSooX8?t=313
ATSFGuy lmsband How about some from Athearn Genesis? https://youtu.be/Fu5O8tSooX8?t=313 We'll see
We'll see
http://www.athearn.com/newsletter/062521/01_GEN_Surfliner_062521.pdf
Regards, Ed
Yep they are officially announced. Although I grew up in California, the Surfliners are too new for me so my wallet is safe.
And btw, the prices on a Athearn's more recent announcements are getting a tad rediculous to quote one guy. I just pulled out one of my Athearn RTR Parcel Trailer 2-packs and the price on the sticker was $16.90 with Retail $23. The Announce price of the new run of parcel trailers is $37.99 retail for a single trailer. That is more than triple the price of the trailers I bought which come out to $11.50 for a single (retail - half of the $23 two pack). Aye aye aye!
Costs are really "up there" for future runs. But so much of Athearns announced stuff is warmed over stuff that's already been run before, thank goodness there is very little I need from Athearn coming over the next year.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Dreams Do Come True!
On the subject of wallet safety, there is the thing about building your own.
I know this is not everyone's cup-of-tea and the diversity of the hobby experience with respect to the range of those wanting to purchase ready-to-run to people who scratch build from the most basic materials is broad.
That said, passenger cars with their window openings are not the easiest thing in the world to scratch build, and as a teen, I remember trying to scratch build passenger cars out of brass and using a nibbling tool to make the window openings as suggested in an article in MR, and how the fine thing just warped on me when I applied a torch to solder on a car end, where some 50 years later I still have that "artifact" in my collection of railroad models.
At least for AAR "lightweight" passenger cars of the pre-Amtrak post WW-II era, there was a standard roof profile and height of the prototype, and there was a kit product that gave the modeler a plastic extrusion of that roof, a floor, car ends and plastic car sides into which one could carve windows.
With laser-cutter technology that is now more widespread than some 15 years ago when a colleague at work had a brother-in-law who bought one of those things for his garage-business of making plastic signs, and I paid him $60 to make a "run" of sides and ends and floors of some light-rail vehicles and some Pacific Northwest Talgo cars of my own free-lance design, it shouldn't be too hard to get any custom door and window arrangement laser cut -- back then the process was limited to acrylic, but can you laser cut styrene that is easier to glue?
I successfully built the light rail and the Talgo cars and have exhibited them in advocating for local train service and operate them on my layout at home, they are not super-detailed by any stretch of the imagination but they communicated the concepts of that style of intra-city and inter-city trains.
That said, anyone have any insights on what it would take to 3D print Surfliner/Superliner/Amfleet/LRC/Siemens passenger car roof profiles and maybe car ends? Amfleet is tricky because of the curved sides, but could laser cutters make sections of flat sides or the angled bottom portions I see on the Athearn Surfliner models? Are laser cutters able to make ridges for stainless steel "fluting"?
What say others about the advances in computerized additive (3D printing) and subtractive (laser cutter) machining about making roofs, car ends, floors and customized sides with window and door cutouts?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
On the subject of passenger-train advocacy using models, both my custom Talgos as well as the close-out sale of the first-gen leased Talgos in HO by Walthers that are more detailed and painted in the Amtrak-Washington State colors went over as "meh" to train show audiences.
I am a long-time HO modeler, but on impulse I bought a Bachman-Williams set of a Genesis diesel and some Amfleet cars along with a loop of 3-rail O-gauge roadbed track at the model train show from a vendor -- I wanted the locomotive but I was going to scratch build Talgo cars in O-scale, but I was persuaded to take the Amfleet cars because the dealer did not want to break up the set. It is a good thing a made this expensive purchase because that locomotive and cars have not been available since.
I never got around to building Talgo cars in the larger scale. The Genesis loco was 3-rail with high flanges and oversize knuckle couplers, but it was to scale proportions and a really nicely detailed and painted model within the "hi-rail" idiom as it were. The Amfleet cars were awful, with nothing like the prototypical "Budd Pioneer-III" inside bearing trucks, the length was shortened -- a lot -- and the window pattern was just made up.
I skipped the HO Talgos and exhibited this O-gauge model the next year. This train had little to do with prototype Amfleet or the proposed Midwest Talgo. But visitors came up to the exhibit and kept telling me, "Oh, we rode this train last summer on our trip out East!" Maybe the much larger size along with the Amtrak paint scheme made a better impression, but this O-gauge toy train made a much better connection regarding Amtrak people had ridden and the prospect of getting Amtrak to our community than my carefully built Talgo models with functioning guided-axle mechanisms.
I have to wonder whether frequent annealing of your nibbled car sides would have nipped your warping issue in the bud. I learned about this as a child from that magnificent tome The Boy Mechanic -- still one of my favorite books.
There is nothing 'easier to glue' than acrylic: it solvent-welds via capillary action quickly and perfectly. Some of the solvents interfere with clarity of glazing material which is a potential complication. Jigging for microscope cover glass might address this... for those patient enough to nibble out windows.
My personal feeling about Amfleet is that the sides should be rolled rather than 'formed'. Laser 'marking' is an erosive process, and won't give you either smooth fluting for Budd sides or the kind of ridging on Amfleet; about the best you'll get is a kind of shadow-line effect (like the fake paint fluting made to simulate the Budd 'effect') or stairstepped features (as likely with practical additive 3D printing of fluted sides). While it's possible that hand tooling and creative use of abrasives might let you polish out the stepping to a reasonable surface finish, that would also ruin any fluting with sharp 'peaks' between the flutes.
As we have many people here with firsthand experience in fine modeling using 3D printing, I look forward to seeing what advice and equipment they recommend in this thread going forward... if this discussion belongs in a Surfliner thread. Personally, I'd prefer that the discussion starting with Prof. Milenkovic's original points be moved to an appropriately-titled new thread.
I suspect lasers could be used on styrene with a high enough pulse repeat rate and directed shielding gas; you need point ablation without bulk melting of the polymer/copolymer. I would tentatively suspect you'd be better off with something in the ABS copolymer family, and 'take your lumps' using fabrication and gluing specific to those materials.
I suspect the 'answer' to Amfleet would be to roll the sides and perhaps the roof in one strip, laser-cut the windows, doors, and other features (and mark location for grabs or other features to be attached) and then roll the shell to final curve ready to attach internal carlines, bulkheads, etc. to hold the shape. I suspect resistance soldering (or even micro-shotwelding!) would be your friends here.
As a side project: consider the best combination of technologies to fabricate scale Amfleet Pioneer III truck frames... and the bearing systems to make scale wheelsets run properly