Every so often, like late last night, I get to doubting my methods.
I cannot afford to stock up on lots of off-the-shelf rolling stock at $30+ a pop, so I pick up lots of pre-owned stuff......you know, stuff that ranges from $6 to $15 or so a piece. Then I start adding metal wheels and knuckle couplers myself, which works out to less than $5 per refit.
I do some heavy weathering on most items so I am not looking for spotless retail beauties in the first place.....and with my eyesight, at modest distance, I can't see much detail anyway.
But after surveying the collection that needs attention I wonder "what was I thinking?" Should I have just used the money to buy less than 1/5 as many right off the shelf? I know they would have nicer detail etc.
Does anyone else collect, refurbish and run these older cars? Or do most go for that nice stuff I see advertised for what I think are astronomical prices?
I sort of look at it like this--if'n I'm gonna weather or modify something and I'm not at a level that I'd be comfortable doing stuff to brand new $35cdn cars I'd druther do it to something a little cheaper. And yes, those other things do add to the final cost---but & here's my sticking point ---imagine a RTR boxcar weathered and all that with the custom trucks and all. How much will that set you back? Or if it was done as cheaply as all that---then it/they will all look alike
And we be sittin' there saying something like: "oh, for the wings of any bird. Other than a battery hen----"
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
I have a few of the atlas and walthers RTR cars. Never really rolled right and needed lots of adjustments. I bought a box of misc cars from ebay that had over 100 items for under $30.00 I have added metal wheels to all of the ones I am going to keep and weathered some. The rest I have sold on ebay and made twice what I paid for all of them and I still have half left. Most of my engines are preused engines that I have tweaked or remotored. I have athern, ahm, and Riv engines that got remotored, rewired and detailed. I like them, gave me something to practice on. Now I have 2 undecorated atlas rs-1 locos that I will feel confident to detail them.
alco's forever!!!!! Majoring in HO scale Minorig in O scale:)
Cisco Kid Every so often, like late last night, I get to doubting my methods. I cannot afford to stock up on lots of off-the-shelf rolling stock at $30+ a pop, so I pick up lots of pre-owned stuff......you know, stuff that ranges from $6 to $15 or so a piece. Then I start adding metal wheels and knuckle couplers myself, which works out to less than $5 per refit. I do some heavy weathering on most items so I am not looking for spotless retail beauties in the first place.....and with my eyesight, at modest distance, I can't see much detail anyway. But after surveying the collection that needs attention I wonder "what was I thinking?" Should I have just used the money to buy less than 1/5 as many right off the shelf? I know they would have nicer detail etc. Does anyone else collect, refurbish and run these older cars? Or do most go for that nice stuff I see advertised for what I think are astronomical prices?
I would not rethink what you have done. Here is the way I look at it. First you will only make so much money during your life time. The more you save having fun leaves more to have fun with. Secondly , to me the journey is more important than the end. I enjoy tinkering with used products and making them better than when I recieved the item. Thirdly , It drives me absolutely nuts to see some one throw something away that if they just spent a little time making repairs it would be useful. We grew up very frugal. We bought used , repaired used , repair used again ... and then when it was no longer good for its intended purpose we recyled it. This throw away society drives me nuts. Keep up the good work !
Cisco KidDoes anyone else collect, refurbish and run these older cars?
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
I will occasionally pick up a "stray" at a train show, if it's got some characteristic I want. I found an old BB Burlington reefer to match one I already had, and a Swift reefer about the time the Swift plant was going on to the layout. Mostly, though, train show stuff is showing up with plastic Talgo trucks and horn-hooks, and there's nothing special about the body, either.
I love that Walthers catalog, though. I've been following the prices of the Mather box cars, both kits and RTR. I picked up a couple right away, at the $16.95 price for the kit. Along the way, I've seen the RTRs reduced to less than that, and the kits in the $8 range. An e-mail to my LHS fattened my fleet for very little cost.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Have I been directed to a new forum?? You mean you people actually buy old "stuff" and fix and use them?? what a unique concept, and do you have fun repairing and painting these items? I must commend you on your efforts, does your layout look like the $35,000.00 layout? I bet it does, just because you don't buy every new item available certainly does not quantify your layout, keep up the good work, I can certainly tell you that you are not alone doing what you do, and you are not really miserable are you?
Heck, I'm lucky to find anything within a decade of what was actually run. I take what I can get.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
Wow. You must have been in my head last night. Was thinking the very same thing.
I have this sort of petty personal issue with myself when it comes to cars that have been weathered. I bought some old blue box kits with the full intention of trying my weathering skills out. I kept them for a bit and never got around to touching them. Why? Probably because I know I won't get the look anywhere near what I want. Then there's the initial expense of all the material (including airbrush), trial and error, and time involved. I'd rather run my trains instead.
And that leads me to my next observation. The fella's that weather and detail cars locally and on Ebay. Some are very pricey. $50 for a decent looking car. $300 for one that you'd swear was the proto shrunk down in some sort of contraption to HO Scale. I love those spectacular cars like that but can't afford those prices. So how have I "compromised"?
I go to shows and buy RTR's usually in bulk. Some dealers will give you a good price if you buy 3 or more and I typically just do that. Only thing is.....they're not weathered BUT they have good detail and I like 'em.
Sort of a trade off for me. I've since learned to forget about it and remember why I do this. For fun. So what if it looks shiny, new, whatever. It's a train and to me that's what got me started in this mess in the first place.
Well, that's alright then....even if Tantans is making fun of me for posting the obvious.
It's just that late a night sometimes, with a couple of dozen cars on the bench and dozens more packets of underset couplers torn open, I wonder if I am just buying up fellow [wiser] hobbiests cast offs and letting them use my money to by a few rtr beauties.
I do love refurbishing most. Only 1 out of all my locos was DCC rtr.
Cisco KidWell, that's alright then....even if Tantans is making fun of me for posting the obvious.
I don't think he was making fun of you. I think he was more poking fun at the "disagreements" between the "DIY" crowd and the "RTR" crowd. And no, that's not an invitation to anyone to debate that dead horse in this topic thread.
Cisco KidI do love refurbishing most.
And that's what it all boils down to. If it's what YOU enjoy, go with it and don't worry about what anyone else thinks!
FWIW, I do the same thing...I have a large fleet of older Athearn BB and similar cars that I've slowly changed out wheelsets, couplers, and done weathering on. It's something to do when I'm taking a break from detailing locomotives!
Robert Beaty
The Laughing Hippie
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The CF-7...a waste of a perfectly good F-unit!
Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the
end of your tunnel, Was just a freight train coming
your way. -Metallica, No Leaf Clover
Cisco Kid Every so often, like late last night, I get to doubting my methods.
Bottom line...are you having fun?...My opinion, even if I had one, is irrelevant.
Mark
yougottawanta I would not rethink what you have done. Here is the way I look at it. First you will only make so much money during your life time. The more you save having fun leaves more to have fun with. Secondly , to me the journey is more important than the end. I enjoy tinkering with used products and making them better than when I recieved the item. Thirdly , It drives me absolutely nuts to see some one throw something away that if they just spent a little time making repairs it would be useful. We grew up very frugal. We bought used , repaired used , repair used again ... and then when it was no longer good for its intended purpose we recyled it. This throw away society drives me nuts. Keep up the good work !
My thoughts exactly. There isn't a loco, structure, or piece of rolling stock on my layout that didn't spend some time in someone else's train room. I go to the hobby store only as a last resort and in the 8 years I've spent on my layout I've placed 2 orders to Walthers. I even buy my track 2nd hand. I can fix practically anything and I take pride in the fact that my layout is made of hand-me-downs and cast-offs. If I'd bought everything new, I'd have 1/4 the layout at 4 times the price, and I'd have spent a lot fewer hours doing what I like best - model railroading.
As for results, I'm OK with it:
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
If I wasn’t the King of Cheap I wouldn’t be in this hobby at all!
I usually demo the engine for all the locomotives detail parts, cab, domes, stack, pilot, etc. all of which saves a great deal of money. I also scratch and kitbash a lot of my stuff now, some say its as expensive as just buying and depending on your parts source, yes that’s true, but by using cheap sources like above, fabricating a lot of stuff out of styrene and reusing cheaply aquired items disposed of by others, I’ve now got a roster of a lot, and I mean ALOT of engines and rolling stock. 10% of my roster is scratchbuilt, 60% is kitbashed, some a little, some very heavily. If I limited myself to the pay-thru-the-nose RTR prices, after 7 years in this, I'd have a far less varied roster of the exact same engine everyone else has. As it is I have a roster of great variety.
So being the King of Cheap for me has had definite bonuses. Keep at it, try bashing some of your cheaper stuff, its fun.
Have fun with your trains
shayfan84325 yougottawanta I would not rethink what you have done. Here is the way I look at it. First you will only make so much money during your life time. The more you save having fun leaves more to have fun with. Secondly , to me the journey is more important than the end. I enjoy tinkering with used products and making them better than when I recieved the item. Thirdly , It drives me absolutely nuts to see some one throw something away that if they just spent a little time making repairs it would be useful. We grew up very frugal. We bought used , repaired used , repair used again ... and then when it was no longer good for its intended purpose we recyled it. This throw away society drives me nuts. Keep up the good work ! My thoughts exactly. There isn't a loco, structure, or piece of rolling stock on my layout that didn't spend some time in someone else's train room. I go to the hobby store only as a last resort and in the 8 years I've spent on my layout I've placed 2 orders to Walthers. I even buy my track 2nd hand. I can fix practically anything and I take pride in the fact that my layout is made of hand-me-downs and cast-offs. If I'd bought everything new, I'd have 1/4 the layout at 4 times the price, and I'd have spent a lot fewer hours doing what I like best - model railroading. As for results, I'm OK with it:
I agree with you two. I have bought some new stuff over the last 25 years, but most of it is used from yard sales, flea market, swap meets and Ebay.
The newest engine I have is 3 years, the oldest a Christmas present 46 years ago, which still runs. The oldest cars I run, are Athern kits from the 50's.
I do wood working as a hobby too, using mostly used lumber. I sometimes end up with some 1/16 strips of wood. So figured out a way to cut those down on the scroll saw for scratch building material.
I don't buy much of anything new, less I have to.
inch
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/4309
Chief:
Don't doubt your miserliness, be proud of your thrift. Turns it right around. Ben Franklin would approve.
I enjoy threads like this. For years, I thought I was the only model railroader who thought about mundane concerns like cost. Then I come here, and I see that lots of people do. That's good to know.
Since this has become a brag thread, I'll just point to my $2 coal depot:
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/151097.aspx
I'm working on a yard office now, from some Julian Cavalier drawings in MR. I'm hoping to come in under $2 on this one, too.
Cisco,
Thats great you do that! I've been doing it for years, its kind of like a hobby within a hobby of MR. I've been doing it for years, Loco's, Cars, Buildings, or what ever I can get my hands on for cheap.
The train show last weekend I went to had quite a bit of freight cars. I bought some out of production BB Athearns with horn hook couplers for like $5 each. And some newer Branchline kits for about the same price. I like tinkering with the "making it better" kind of work.