Model Railroading > Bowser Spine Cars

What has been your experience with these cars--several offered on ebay and I was thinking about a purchase.

Thanks
Dale Smith

One of the best products they've ever done. I've had no problems with them and look great.

Rick

I have one set. They run smoothly and have great detail. I say go for it. Makes me want to go back and upgrade my Walthers sets.

Runs nice,looks nice & vary fragile!! A great car along with the Athearn spine car that are probably made at the same factory in China. Think how you would like to have the car configured,containers or trailers as it would be hard to switch a spine between both. I have 3,1 is trailers,1 for containers & 1 mixed. I was hoping it would be easier to switch but the car is fragile,not for kids. It would be nice if they could also come out with the ones that carry 20ft containers

Tim
Hanesworth

Well, I got three.
The model as is represents a prototype too new for me as it was made in 1997 and I'm modeling Sept.21st, 1995.
So I backdated one of them to a 12/94 RAF53A series model whick requires, among other things, custom etched container petestal cover lids and removal of the raised areas on the platforms, and a lot of relettering and renumbering. Not a job for the faint-of-heart.

Had mine in a contest, and even while packed very carefully it was crushed during the return trip through airports and airplanes. :-(
Shattered all hitches and broke four trucks so be careful with them.
Beautiful, nice car, and VERY fragile.

Jürgen Dietrichkeit
Weilheim, BY

atsf643 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, I got three.
> The model as is represents a prototype too new for
> me as it was made in 1997 and I'm modeling
> Sept.21st, 1995.
> So I backdated one of them to a 12/94 RAF53A
> series model whick requires, among other things,
> custom etched container petestal cover lids and
> removal of the raised areas on the platforms, and
> a lot of relettering and renumbering. Not a job
> for the faint-of-heart.

Do you have any photos of the changes you made, to backdate the model?

I was running a very long and heavy train, and a female articulation joint broke apart on a five unit car. Looked at it and it was a bad casting. Now my five unit car has been renumbered to a three unit car. The cars are very, very fragile. In some cases my cars didn't have enough glue applied when assembled and they fell apart during transport and sometimes when running. But they are nice cars and I just went through them and checked all the assemblies, using ACC where needed.

I'm working on restoring it after the airline mistreatment.
Then I'll post some pix. Later, an article on the conversion will probably appear in the "Warbonnet", the quarterly publication of the Santa Fe Railway Historical&Modeling Society.

Jürgen Dietrichkeit
Weilheim, BY

atsf643 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm working on restoring it after the airline
> mistreatment.
> Then I'll post some pix. Later, an article on the
> conversion will probably appear in the
> "Warbonnet", the quarterly publication of the
> Santa Fe Railway Historical&Modeling Society.

Cool ... "The Warbonnet" is one of the few magazines I still get. :-)

YES...Very fragile, but well detailed. I had a friend send me a set - new in box - to weather. The platform on the 'A' unit was toast(but that could've been bad packaging). I noticed that a lot of the 'ribbing' into the center frame from the platform was loose, and sometimes barely in the slots. But, I would recommend them! They aren't that much better than Athearn's RTR cars, but you'll still have to clean out all the flash from the metal frame to get the plastic to fit correctly.....maybe, this was a first run issue with Bowser's?

Rick

I had to send my first set back. I had a bad casting and they wouldn't mate up right. Also, all of the cars were pretty significantly bowed and the supports underneath were nowhere near perpendicular to the platform. Very sloppy construction. I sent them back and got another set that hitched together ok, but was still bowed. I think my pics are still here on TO if you search back awhile. My final opinion - great design, poor QA and execution. I've heard of sets that look ok though, so you might get lucky. My advice would be to make sure you get a look at the cars before you buy them.

I'll echo Matt's comments. I have 2 of the 5-unit version. The first was from the 1st run. It was salvageable, so I kept it. I was hoping the 2nd run would be better. A little better, but still had issues. If the 2nd run had corrected the assembly issues of the 1st run, I would have ordered more. However I can't bring myself to buy a car that costs as much as an engine that requires that much surgery to correct. Maybe I just got unlucky and got 2 lemons in a row. I'm much happier with the Athearn spine car, and will purchase more of those instead. Rather have a 3-unit version that is right, than a 5-unit version with defects. The Bowser car has great potential, if the assembly had more attention to detail (literally).