Pasenger Car Questions


jbovinette

Florida Railroads
I have a couple questions about passenger cars. I am looking to model a couple named train like: Atlantic Coast Line Champion & Florida Special, Florida East Coast Champion & Henry M. Flagler, Seaboard Air Line Silver Meteor, and the Southern Royal Palm. I am looking for the streamlined cars and I am looking at the IHC and the ConCor. Can anyone tell me about these. I would get the Walthers but OMG these things are expensive. Especially if I'm doing 6 trains with 7 cars each. I dont have a lot of knowledge on the IHC and the ConCor. Which is more like the prototype and which one is better? I'm going to be repainting them in ALCLAD paint and redecaling them. I know the IHC are becoming hard to find but I dont know about the ConCor.

Thanks,
John
 
I like the Con-Cor streamlined cars better than AHM, since Con-Cor had both fluted and smooth side cars and AHM is almost all smooth side. I don't know the history of any of the trains you've asked about but I've found the detailing on the Con-Cor cars a little better than AHM. Almost all AHM cars are based on UP or Pennsy prototypes and Con-Cor has a little more variety. For either brand, replacing the wheels with good quality metal wheels and making sure they are weighted correctly will be a big help.
 
I wish I could say I am a fan of the inexpensive IHC cars....but....I can't.

I find them to be very light, the trucks and wheels are plastic and wobbly (you can order a vastly improved metal truck from IHC, but now you are getting a car that is maybe $10 more, and that's without shipping!)

You would be further ahead to save and plan for your purchases over a year or two. Check modeltrainstuff.com and find all sorts of cars that you can get for $20-35 each....but they'll be nice and heavy, better detail, and they'll trial better. About the only thing going for IHC, besides the steal price, is that they are light and you can put more of them behind your engines. But that lightness plays against you as you add cars and the ones just behind the engine decide it is easier to lift out of the rails all the time, or not track well through diverging routes in turnouts.

Be prepared to put a lot of effort into IHC cars in order to make them enjoyable.

-Crandell
 
Passenger Cars

Thanks for the reply's guys. Hey Selector, I went to Model Train Stuff and bought every Atlantic Coast Line IHC passenger car he had. I couldn't pass up the deal. He had them for $6.99 each. It's not a big issue to me about the amount of detailing. Later on I'll get the nice detailed cars. Right now I want something to mess around with till that time comes. Thanks for all your comments.

John
 



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