Anybody know how many HO scale passenger cars Rivarossi made as a complete set? I have 4 Santa Fe heavyweights and would like to aquire every version Rivarossi/AHM made.
That would be 8 cars. As far as I knew the only "set" that AHM did with more than 8 was the streamlined Missouri Pacific. So the B&O and UP 8 car sets that Hunslet040 mentioned are news to me. I wonder if that means 16 unique cars or if there are dups between the sets.
I have never seen an actual list of passenger car types. Just vague descriptions (" Set B , 4 car set, 6 car set...... Many times from the pictures on E Bay it appears the "Sets" are simply multiple cars with identical numbers.
Yes on ebay anything goes for description. When AHM went under, Rivarossi chose to market the "Set A" and "Set B" of 4 cars each. So if you have one of those you have one of each kind of car they made.
I would be okay with duplicates after I have acquired one of each of the various car types. A 13 car train would be great.
In real life a car "set" is totally different and will contain many duplicates of kinds of cars. For example to simulate a real train one would want more baggage, coach, and sleepers in the consist because that is where the revenue comes from. You mention the Santa Fe, so that could range from the early 1900s California Special (with all sleepers), to the later 1940s when it was almost all express, baggage and mail cars.
You can research the Santa Fe trains by name California Limited, Scout, Ranger, Grand Canyon Limited, etc. Try queries that include the word "consist", to try to track down exact cars used in each train. To me, a typical Santa Fe trans-con train in the late 1930s would have (maybe an RPO), two baggage cars, dorm-baggage, 3-5 coaches, lounge/parlor, diner, 3-5 sleeper cars, observation. When Santa Fe trains got too long, instead of adding cars and more locos they just ran a second train and called it a 2nd section. It is reported one Christmas the California Limited left Chicago in 23 sections, others contend that was the El Capitan instead.
If you care, the California Limited was always a heavyweight train being replaced with lightweight cars and a new name "the San Francisco Chief" in 1954. The Grand Canyon Limited on the other hand transitioned from heavyweight cars to the lightweight as other trains handed them down. It lasted all the way up to Amtrak.