Spine Cars


B

Boilerbuster

Member
I plan to get some spine cars to round off my intermodal train and I was wondering what you all think of the ones that are out.
I was looking at the Athearn 57' 3 car sets into it but may also include shorter cars as well. I was wondering what your opinions of these cars are and if any others what ones to get?
 
Don:

I have one set of the Athearn 57' Spine cars and four Walthers Roadrunners. After being disappointed by several of Athearn's locomotives and freight cars I was blown away with the quality of the spine set. They are heavy, in gauge, highly detailed, and appear to track great. I wouldn't hesitate for a second to buy another set. They are among my favorite of my intermodal fleet.

The Walthers cars are great too. Metal and heavy, the way I like them. The detail is good and the print is crisp. The only problem with these cars seem to be with the wheels. They were all delivered with wheels out of gauge. That's an easy fix but they are also jumping the frogs. I'm not sure what the problem is yet but if I can't fix it I'm going to try some Intermountain 28" wheels.

macjet
 
I was looking at the Athearn cars in the hobby shop the other day, they look super with fantastic detail and feel nicely weighted.
However they are too new for my era, and I hate cars in the TTAX series since working with the real cars some years back.
 
http://cgi.ebay.com/ATHEARN-HO-RTR-...mQQptZModel_RR_Trains?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

There are several listings at ebay for buy it now but I will be waiting till after the holiday. I cant run these on my layout with my well cars yet as i am just running a 4 by 8 layout at the moment. When I get the tables built downstairs I will have plenty of room. as it is now I can run about a 19 car intermodal train but if I add any more the engine will look like its in the middle of the train lol. When and if I can start to build in the basement I could have a much larger layout but trying to hire someone to move everything out of the basement as I dont have the time to do it myself is the problem.
 
I had a 6 car set of Impaks on evilbay with a starting bid of 4 bucks and no takers. Impaks must not be very popular.
 
I have 18 spine cars of 2 diff. mfgrs. One set is metal & the others are plastic. Don't know what brand they are since I bought them at a train show. I paid $22.00 for the set of 11 & $12.00 for the set of 7. The 11 are metal w/metal wheels. The wheels are smaller than the plastic set has. They track real well. The plastic ones I had to add xtra weights to the trailers to make them stay on the tracks.
Tomorrow I'll look at both sets & maybe figure out who made them or post a pic.

Larry
 
I just received 3 sets of the Athearn 57' spines, they're amazing. I can't wait for the Walthers 48' spines to be re-released, I want to see if they upped any detail.
 
From what I can find, the Athearn Impaks are spine cars, 3 center cars and 2 ends. They don't call them Impak anymore, just spine cars. I found a photo of the prototype.

IMG_5219.jpg
 
maby some thin coat of yellow or construction yellow with some TTX decals and some of doctor bens rust to finish them off with. with some spattering of flat black over it all to make the finishing touch.
 
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