New Intermountain Auto Racks are in!


Sir Robbins

Sir Robbins

Well-Known Member
I ordered 2 auto racks from Intermountain and they arrived the other day while I was out of town. Here are a few pictures of one of them and a bit of info.

The doors on both sides slide open. This is cool but be warned, they can come off very easily and are a bit of a pain to get back on properly. Very sensitive and fragile. Detail is great as is the weight. These are not the anti-graffiti ones that ScaleTrains is shipping next month. I do have those on order as well and will get a few and make a new thread. I waited awhile for Intermountain to catch up on production.

BNSF Auto Rack 1.jpg


BNSF auto rack door 1.jpg


BNSF auto rack side.jpg


BNSF door 1.jpg
 
They look great and I saw the ST ones at 2019 Trainfest and IMO they are even better. Thankfully for my wallet the CN’s Valley Sub from Junction City to Wausau in Central Wisconsin didn’t have them on the rails. Somewhat envious, enjoy them and the ST’s when they arrive.

TomO
 
TLOC said:
They look great and I saw the ST ones at 2019 Trainfest and IMO they are even better. Thankfully for my wallet the CN’s Valley Sub from Junction City to Wausau in Central Wisconsin didn’t have them on the rails. Somewhat envious, enjoy them and the ST’s when they arrive.

TomO
Click to expand...
I need some more autoracks for my future layout, as I’m planning to protolance the Superior Sub from Marshfield-Spencer-Owen. The rear border of my FIL’s hunting woods(between Spencer & Riplinger) is the Superior Sub.
 
TLOC said:
They look great and I saw the ST ones at 2019 Trainfest and IMO they are even better. Somewhat envious, enjoy them and the ST’s when they arrive.

TomO
Click to expand...

Even better but a much newer design. The ST version won't work for those modeling the 1980s if that matters. They do look real nice but are too modern for my caboose era interests.

I did pick up two earlier schemes from the last run from Intermountain, an SP and an L&N
 
D&J,
Do you think you could afford that train of yours with those new cars,...aren't they close to $100 each??....rather expensive for an individual freight car.
 
There is a guy running a 44 unit auto rack train posted at TrainOrders which is pretty impressive:


He reported he's been collecting the models for this train since 2003 when the first Athearn Genesis Auto-max cars were released. It can be a financial challenge to build a long train of expensive cars, but some manage to do it with some persistance.

In my case, my home layout, like many, will have limitations to how many cars can be on the layout and how long trains can be. I'm working on a layout with two 21 foot passing sidings so won't be running any long auto rack trains. The D&RGW in the late 70's seemed to have shorter blocks of auto racks so it should allow for fairly prototypical scenes. As it is, I only have 3 of the Intermountain auto racks, mainly because they only make a few that reach into my period of interest (1977-1983). During that period there was a mix of fully enclosed auto racks, some open racks and some semi-enclosed or open racks with side panels (which lingered will into the late 80's from photo's I've seen).

I've been suggesting to ScaleTrains they might consider offering some auto racks from the early era of semi-enclosed racks covering around 1974-1984 roughly, which is a hole in the HO modeling world.
 
For freight cars, auto racks are pretty much the most expensive out there.

The Intermountain auto racks started out at street price around $60 give or take when they first came out.

I paid about $78 each my two from the most recent run shipped a month or two ago (run 4 I believe). The rivet counter ScaleTrains auto multi-max are $75 direct from ScaleTrains. So depending on the vendor, you can get them a little cheaper and if you are building a longer train, the savings add up somewhat.
 
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I picked a few of em up at train shows in the estate sales area. Put better trucks on em and they roll pretty good.
 
I'm confused,...I thought we were talking about the Intermountain ones in this subject thread,....and those were the ones you picked up at an estate sale???
 
Not sure what you're confused about.
The train in my video is a mix of Athearn, Walthers, maybe Atlas or some other brands. Some I picked up at train shows estate sales for around $20 or so and improved the trucks and rolling capability along with couplers.
Yeah, the thread started out about ST autoracks and drifted to include other brands.
 
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