Kits, RTR or Other ?

[FRRYKid]

In my case, I have a little bit of everything.  Freight car wise, I have probably about 10-15 Athearn RTR as they are cars that I need for the era I model, a quantity of MDC cars that I have stripped and repainted for both my freelanced road and one the prototype road that I model, a small quantity of E&C Shops cars (Mostly woodchips), a few Accurail cars, a dozen or so Walthers cars, a bunch of Tyco caboose (with Athearn caboose trucks), as well as the occasional onesy or twosy from other manufacturers. However, most of the freight cars I have otherwise are BB Athearn. Some of those Athearn BB have been bashed to fit a specific purpose.

Passenger cars are Athearn BB streamliners (with upgraded weights and repainted with custom decals), about 18 or so MDC Overtons, and three older MDC Harrimans (also repainted with custom decals).

On the engine side (40 or so), a Walthers SW1 (original run, with plastic tubing for drive which I upgraded using NWSL components), three P2Ks (2 GP18s and and SW1200), a pair of old AMH U-boats, three Atlas yellow box S-4s, four Model Power 2-6-0 switchers, and the rest are either complete Athearn BBs or else use Athearn BB drives in a kitbash (8 Tythearn GP20s and a Bachthearn GP30).

All of these use some sort of knuckle coupler. (Kadees mostly. The rest will be converted as the need arises.)

[Doughless]

My old BB and MDC stock was assembled for years before I finally sold it off.  I guess I'll have to hold my nose and admit I buy RTR now.

I like the wire grabs and thin roofwalks and replacing the BB/MDC stuff with those details was more work than I wanted to do.  Its simply easier to by it already assembled instead of adding stuff to my older models.

I have a smaller layout than many, with a need for only about 50 to 75 cars total.  So replacing the older cars with RTR cars was not much of a cost issue when factoring in the proceeds from selling the BB stuff and not buying the details to upgrade them.

[Canalligators]

I guess I'll count myself in the cheapskates group.  Out of ~100 cars, I have about 1/3 Athearn BB, about half cheap cars that I've tuned up and added Kadees, and the remainder some sort of high end or craftsman car. 

I do enjoy fabricating "believeable" projects, such as the RC idler/flat car, and detailing or reworking locomotives.  I remotored my Bowser T1 and bought the Bowser running gear for my Bachmann Niagara.  My freelanced freight road is a custom paint and decal job with enhanced lighting (I still run DC).

I've often thought that hours of pleasure per dollar spent is a good metric for success in the hobby.