I currently do not have *ANY* Ready-to-Run items amongst my locomotives or rolling stock. The closest I would have are some Athearn blue box kits, and some trainset el-cheapo RTR cars that have been modified with new trucks and couplers. I guess i just like building and tinkering too much.

I appreciate RTR locos myself but certainly appreciate how tinkering on rolling stock is a fun part of the hobby for you.

Oh, that said, I have modified the appearance of some locos by painting and decaling them for my freelanced road.

I'd rather have kits, but I model more of a modern era so there's less choices for kits, one more recent is the athearn RTR's 50' Sierra Pine (LVRC) box car, only reason I bought it was because I use to work at sierra pine years ago.

20% of my rolling stock is RTR..I use my older BB and MDC cars at the club.

I prefer RTR over tweaking the older BB in order to get the couplers at the correct height and I never did like MDC's trucks and unpainted steps-steps was mounted on a unpainted underframe.

I only bought 1 , a Kadee box car ....it was very nice but at $29 or so , it should have been . I wouldn't get another . I do have 2 RTR Marklin hot metal torpedo cars which are 8 truck , 32 wheel monsters that I'd never seen in kit form ....( when I had money )

T

Until 07 I never bought ant ready to run rolling stock and maybe 4 or 5 locomotives. Everything was kits or locomotives that had to be modified in some fashion. Until around 2001 - 2002 C&O stuff was basically non existent. So I had to do it myself. Now it is readily available. I would still buy kits but I am no longer able to assemble them. Also I am no longer looking for anything. Well there are a few things I would like to get and I mean few.

I personally try to cut down on my level of kits in the interest of time. I'll only buy a kit if A.) I can't get it any other way, B.) its significantly cheaper in kit form, and/or C.) I can put it together quickly.

I don't mind assembling kits, but the problem becomes that these kits are time consuming. A Blue box or Walthers kit probably goes together in a few hours, but more involved kits, such as my resin commuter car kits, take a LONG time to put together. That time addes up, especially when there may be other, more important projects to be completed.

For most locomotives and freight cars, I'll probably go RTR.

I remember the title of a clinic at an NMRA event: "Ready to Run it Ain't". The fact is that to do any sort of justice to a ready-to-run car, you need to look at minimum improvements like painting unpainted underframe and truck sideframes and bare metal wheels, replacing plastic couplers, replacing the Athearn clip-on coupler pockets where applicable with Kadee boxes screwed in place, and then paint improvements and weathering. Plus bringing it to NMRA weight. I picked up a Walthers Trainline car over the holidays because I liked the paint scheme, but when I got it home I discovered the $15 car had plastic couplers and trucks that snapped onto the bolsters. Plus the usual issues with the bare plastic parts that needed paint. At least it had metal wheels, which are getting to be pretty universal with RTR. So in a lot of cases, you have to turn an RTR car back into a kit to bring it up to standards and then reassemble it. So I don't make too much distinction between kit as in Athearn bluebox or Accurail and RTR -- they're about the same time and effort. Resin or craftsman wood, of course, are very different.

JWB - that's very true. They do make some RTR items in HOn3 now that come pre-weathered, but they are all D&RGW prototypes and I don't have a D&RGW layout. Plus, they are pricy. The few standard gage items I would at least have to weather and possibly modify slightly, and as you say once you do any modification you aren't saving any time over a shake-the-box type kit. I'd wouldn't hesitate to buy RTR if the price was right and it was a model I wanted, but so far that hasn't happened.

I do agree with jwb too. Interesting standpoint. When you count the time spent on improvements, it turns out it is as time consuming as a classic kit. Even the finest RTR always need a few touch up to make them look real on the layout.

Matt

nachoman Wrote:they are pricy.

I have far more time than I do money. I have several RTR Steam locos ( a pair of C&O H8's included ), but next to no, RTR cars. MDC, and Athearn BB kits, and one or two RTR cars from my first days in HO trains.
Almost all of my Narrow Gauge cars, are MDC, Precision Scale, Smoky Mountain Model Works, Model Railroad General Store, Grandt Line, Durango Press, and Labelle.....and a couple I can't remember, it's been that long since I built them.
The MDC offerings were the "Old Time " series, standard gauge kits, shortened and narrowed. Most of my narrow gauge coaches started out as standard gauge "shorties".
One of my standard gauge reefers, is a "steel side" kit, and I have an Athearn "Steel side" box car kit in the original packaging .

jwb Wrote:I remember the title of a clinic at an NMRA event: "Ready to Run it Ain't". The fact is that to do any sort of justice to a ready-to-run car, you need to look at minimum improvements like painting unpainted underframe and truck sideframes and bare metal wheels, replacing plastic couplers, replacing the Athearn clip-on coupler pockets where applicable with Kadee boxes screwed in place, and then paint improvements and weathering. Plus bringing it to NMRA weight. I picked up a Walthers Trainline car over the holidays because I liked the paint scheme, but when I got it home I discovered the $15 car had plastic couplers and trucks that snapped onto the bolsters. Plus the usual issues with the bare plastic parts that needed paint. At least it had metal wheels, which are getting to be pretty universal with RTR. So in a lot of cases, you have to turn an RTR car back into a kit to bring it up to standards and then reassemble it. So I don't make too much distinction between kit as in Athearn bluebox or Accurail and RTR -- they're about the same time and effort. Resin or craftsman wood, of course, are very different.

To be fair, Walthers "Trainline" are the very basic low-level Walthers equipment, and if its an older model, it won't have all the "upgrades". for ~$5 more you can get a Walthers Mainline car with metal wheels, metal couplers (at the right height) inside of screw-in coupler pockets, trucks screwed into the frame, and the proper weight. In particular metal couplers are becoming standard on all very recent Walthers cars.

Indeed, the only flaws with some of these cars is that they are using some old tooling (as in the case of the Evans 50' boxcar / X72 types). The car in functional without any modifications.

Besides, there are many levels of RTR cars out there, and even if they do require some extra work, they can run as soon as they're out of the box 99% of the time, and don't require any additional parts (kadee couplers, metal wheels, etc.) 90% of the time when we're talking about "new" stock. Most of the time, the kind of improvements you mention can be saved for a rainy day, and don't require major surgery to complete.

For stuff like weathering, it doesn't really matter if the car is RTR or a kit, it will take time to do.

Older RTR is a different story, but for the most part you can rely on an RTR Atlas or Walthers car.

Again, when time and resources are at a minimum, RTR makes more sense then buying the equivalent kits, since you'll never be able to build them all up.

You mention the Walthers Evans X72 boxcars -- everyone has his or her own standards, but even given trucks with metal wheels that screw in and metal couplers on these cars, there are basic things that still need to be done from my point of view. These are personal preferences, though some come from 50+ years experience trying to get HO trains to work right!

[attachment=13193]

I'm out of Details West cushion underframes and so is my LHS, so for starters, I would normally have replaced the whole Walthers underframe with a Details West, since the detail is a little better and it includes the cushion, which the prototype had. But simply as a stopgap, I don't run any cars with clip-on Athearn coupler pockets. I drilled out the nub or whatever it is that the coupler swivels on in these pockets, tapped 2-56, and inserted a screw to keep the clip-on coupler pocket cover in place.

Second, I simply can't stand bare metal wheels or unpainted couplers, and I can't stand shiny plastic truck sideframes, so I had to fix those.

Third, if the car represents the period 1968-1978, I add the ACI label to the paint. Even RTR with good paint is inconsistent over doing this.

Fourth, the car is about an ounce short of NMRA weight, and this matters on larger layouts with longer trains.

This view stresses how really bad the stock stirrup steps are, and I need to schedule all my Walthers X72s through the shop for this. I'm steadily working througn the same issue with my Athearn and Accurail cars.

RTR in recent years has definitely improved paint, like these Walthers cars. On the whole, RTR cars that are upgraded old tooling, like ex-bluebox Athearn RTR or Walthers like these, and cost in maybe the $20-25 range, are a good deal because they include metal wheels and couplers and much improved paint. If like much recent Walthers Mainline RTR, they also have screw-in coupler pockets, so much the better. However I still say ready-to-run they ain't!

jwb Wrote:You mention the Walthers Evans X72 boxcars -- everyone has his or her own standards, but even given trucks with metal wheels that screw in and metal couplers on these cars, there are basic things that still need to be done from my point of view. These are personal preferences, though some come from 50+ years experience trying to get HO trains to work right!

Well, an HO train that "works right" straight from the box, is a good RTR car. The Evans X72 I purchased seems to have these qualities, since it has yet to give me any sort of trouble, not even a minor inconveniance, and its been running for literally hours a day on my train for my club's open house.

Quote:I'm out of Details West cushion underframes and so is my LHS, so for starters, I would normally have replaced the whole Walthers underframe with a Details West, since the detail is a little better and it includes the cushion, which the prototype had. But simply as a stopgap, I don't run any cars with clip-on Athearn coupler pockets. I drilled out the nub or whatever it is that the coupler swivels on in these pockets, tapped 2-56, and inserted a screw to keep the clip-on coupler pocket cover in place.

Second, I simply can't stand bare metal wheels or unpainted couplers, and I can't stand shiny plastic truck sideframes, so I had to fix those.

Third, if the car represents the period 1968-1978, I add the ACI label to the paint. Even RTR with good paint is inconsistent over doing this.

Fourth, the car is about an ounce short of NMRA weight, and this matters on larger layouts with longer trains.

This view stresses how really bad the stock stirrup steps are, and I need to schedule all my Walthers X72s through the shop for this. I'm steadily working througn the same issue with my Athearn and Accurail cars.

The way I figure it, there is a difference between "looks right" and "Works right". I'd hardly argue that the Evans X72 looks right. I think the Conrail Cyclopedia has an extensive article on EXACTLY what is wrong with these cars. If you want models that look right, then yes, I agree, most RTR cars do not look right out of the box.

However, RTR implies that the car is ready to be run, right out of the box. Most of the items you list, except for the weight and arguably the coupler pocket situation, are aesthetic things. Whether or not you add the ACI tags, weather the wheels, trucks and couplers, or replace the stirrup steps, the car is still functional, and somewhat attractive.

These save you time since at least you have a functional car now, and can worry about fixing the details later (as opposed to having a back log of un-operable, unfinished kits that are only partially constructed).

I never seen a true RTR car and I have around 80 and many of those are Atlas,ER,Intermountain,Genesis and every one needed their shiny trucks and wheel faces painted.The Atlas and Genesis needed couplers switched out to KD.

It still pays to check coupler height,wheel gauge and truck swing before placing these "RTR" cars in service.