Hi,
Based in your experience, what company makes the most accurate and best quality h0 scale flat cars? Walthers, accurail or intermountain?Or any other brand that you could recommend me?
Thanks!
That depends on what kind of flat car you want, and for what era. If you're modeling today the answer could be very different from modeling 1950.
Rob Spangler
Very good point. My bad.It's for 40s, 50s locomotives (BB, F7)
I believe that the Proto 2000 kits build up into some nice looking flatcars.
HackcellIt's for 40s, 50s...(BB, F7)
I'd head to the site for Walthers http://www.walthers.com/ and start looking for flat cars, using an advanced search (type in "flat" under the key word and search in HO rolling stock). You're going to find a lot of cars outside your era. Some manufacturers like Accurail or ExactRail aren't going to have appropriate 50s cars, and others may have a wide range of later (and maybe a few earlier) prototypes. Walthers/Proto, Bowser, Intermountain, and Red Caboose all have nice ready to roll or easy kit flats that may work. There are other makes of some more train set quality cars (including Walthers Trainline, Bachmann or Model Power) that will show up in a search too. They may cost less but since you were asking about the "best" cars I didn't really consider them.
Athearn doesn't sell through Walthers but they also have some cars you may like, but they have no recent runs so are currently out of stock. They turn up all the time at train shows ebay or whatever. Tangent has an excellent 60' GSC flat from the late 50s https://www.tangentscalemodels.com/gsc-60%e2%80%b2-flat-car/ .
Tichy 40-foot flat car kits:
On my layout, these are "idler flats" for use in carfloat service, so they are intentionally weathered heavily. I added a real wood deck using a sheet from Northeast Scale Lumber, plus metal wheels from Intermountain. The cars also have complete underside brake details with all the piping, and wire grabs. And, the kits are only $8.95 each, undecorated.
So what's the catch? These are kits for kit lovers and masochists only. The underside details are all individually applied parts, and the piping must be cut and bent to shape. The stake pockets on the sides are all individually applied parts, best applied with tweezers. They're not one-evening jobs, but in the end the results are pretty satisfying.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
For that period of time I like the Red Caboose 42' Flat (Undec Kits only through Red Caboose). Tiichy makes 40' Flat as noted above and a much simpler kit for a 52' GSC Flat. Again as noted above the Tangent 60' Flat is superb. I have never built the Proto Flat but based on the other Proto Kits I have built I would think it would be good.
Rick J
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
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dti406I have never built the Proto Flat but based on the other Proto Kits I have built I would think it would be good.
I've built several of the P2K 52' flats. It's an easy build that produces a highly detailed car that's properly weighted.
The Walthers 52' flat is very similar. Not quite the detail of the P2K, it's still a great model, plus you have options for adding bulkheads and TOFC equipment with it.
In both cases -- and with several other of the kits mentioned already -- you can get laser cut real wood decks to replace the plastic decks provided in the kits, including for the bulkheads on the Walthers kit. It's a nice upgrade that makes it a little easier to weather nicely, too.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I prefer the Walthers flatcars that Mike mentioned. They ride nice and low on their trucks and track well.
The decks are separate pieces and can be painted and weathered to suit your tastes:
And they also come with optional bulkead ends - I used mine on some Athearn flats which I had lowered and then re-decked with stripwood:
Also included are parts to create piggyback flatcars - end ramps, hitches, and rub-rails. There wasn't a great deal of piggyback around in my '30s modelling era, so I used parts of the rub-rails as trim under the eaves of the railroad's car shops:
Wayne