I wasn't sure where those cars had gone, but I should have known.
By the way, Hutch's which became Trains on Brant, then moved to another location (even more out-of-the-way than K-Val Hobbies in Buffalo)
is no longer. The new owner tried to take it upscale, with nothing but mostly high end r-t-r and and not much for actual modellers. The character was stripped right out of the place and most of us "regulars" went elsewhere.
I have tons of Train Miniature and Train Miniature of Illinois stuff, and continue to buy more as I come across it. My latest find was a 25 ton industrial crane, unbuilt, in its original box, for $5.00.
Here's one that I picked up not too long ago - since it was an oddball in my fleet of Athearn hoppers, it was sold to a fellow modeller here on Big Blue:
I used a more modern BLT. date than would be practical on my layout, and, by the looks of it, substituted Athearn trucks. That may have been more a case of wanting the TM trucks than to correct any rolling deficiencies, though. As Andrew
mentions, the truck tuner improves them greatly, although I generally prefer to keep the plastic wheels unless they're among the batch that were out-of-round or not-square to the axle. Their Andrews and Bettendorf "T"-section trucks were very nicely rendered in both solid and sprung sideframe versions. The sprung trucks can be vastly improved by disassembling them and removing flash from both the sideframes and the bolsters, at the points where the latter slides vertically within the sideframe.
With a little work, TM cars will look good on any layout set anywhere from the early '20s to the late '50s and for house cars, their low profile adds prototypical variety to any train.
Here's an example of the TM sprung Andrews trucks (under an Accurail boxcar):
Solid sideframe T-section Bettendorfs under a modified TM boxcar:
Sprung TM Bettendorf trucks under an Athearn hopper:
One fault with the hopper is that the wheels will rub on the brake levers on the car's underframe when going around curves, but a little "adjustment" with an X-Acto cures that.
The OS, AM, and V&O cars were done, if I recall correctly, about the time that these so-called "lichen belt" railroads were popular in RMC and MR and I think all three owners bought enough to enable special runs of each road name - they were done in multiple car numbers. I picked up mine in Nashville, at Aardvark Hobbies (mistakenly thought I could finally find that 1932 aardvark for which I had so long been hunting).
Gary, mismatched trucks weren't that rare with TM cars, but they were also much more common on the prototype than most modellers realise. It's not a feature most of us look for in prototype photos, but I have several on my layout so-equipped.
Wayne