Model Railroading > HO scale 86 foot boxcars Athearn vs Walthers

Are these two different boxcars as I have been told? Tim

Yes two different cars both are old at this point the Athearn goes way back, the Walthers is better but not spectacular to today's standards.

The Athearn car is a Greenville prototype, Walthers represents a Pullman Standard design.

Tim Costello

tgcostello Wrote:
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> The Athearn car is a Greenville prototype,
> Walthers represents a Pullman Standard design.
>
> Tim Costello

IIRC, the Athearn 4-door car is a Greenville, and the 8-door Athearn is a Thrall.

Wonder if any of the hobby manufacturers would be interested in providing a "genesis" quality four door and eight door 86' boxcar from the various prototype builders.  I model the early 1990's in northwest Ohio and could sure use some.  Anyone else be able to use these?

Shawn

Beautiful cars but they tend to dwarf most home layouts! Pretty hot on a club sized layout though!

ESPEE5318 Wrote:
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> Yes two different cars both are old at this point
> the Athearn goes way back, the Walthers is better
> but not spectacular to today's standards.

Note that at some point, Walthers upgraded their model to include separate door locking bars (they were molded on the original model), and I think the side ladders may have been upgrade too (don't have access to my models at the moment). I think it was when they became part of the Gold Line. That was a definite improvement, and while the models are still lacking in underbody detail, that's hard to see below the low side sills.

osp1729 Wrote:
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> Wonder if any of the hobby manufacturers would be
> interested in providing a "genesis" quality four
> door and eight door 86' boxcar from the various
> prototype builders.

I think there's a definite market for models of the Greenville and Thrall prototypes. I suspect someone will produce a model or two at some point, but there's probably some concern about whether the cars are too big for many model railroads (as mentioned above).

I need a few dozen to model autoparts trains on my future layout, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Dave

I can't see them any bigger than autorack cars

Kind of the way I see it (trying to look at it for the manufacturer's perspective) is that you can't get around the fact that an autorack or a TOFC flat is 89' long. If you want to model one of those, it has to be that long. However, there are lots of sizes of box cars, even autoparts cars, so manufacturers have other options for producing box car models that will appeal to customers. Note how many 60' box car models have appeared in the past decade or so, compared to zero 86' cars (I believe the Walthers models are older). Those 60 footers are big, impressive-looking cars on a model railroad without being overwhelming. My guess is that manufacturers think 60' cars will appeal to more people than larger 86' cars, partly because of their size, so that's what they've chosen to produce.

Dave