Back, just briefly to the US Pacific North West HO layout, I keep intending to get out there but constantly thwarted by more pressing tings that need doing, I took early retirement at 55 and have, quite honestly, never been so busy
I've been eyeing up Autoracks for the layout, they're massive, in model form and real life, not heavy, just massive physically and close to 90' long; most manufacturers quote minimum radius as 24" which even for US HO can be a little tight. Good Autoracks will set you back a pretty penny (relative) so you really don't want to be buying stuff that doesn't fit or look right or fit and we're all guilty of that right
I'm also conscious of the machine gun purchases in O I did and ending up selling a lot (all eventually) that didn't suit my changing needs. To that end when a couple of these came up cheap on Ebay (£25) I decided to take a punt for two reasons, fidelity and visuals on the projected layout. They're from the shallower end of the detail pool (Walters Proto) but then the price reflects that too.
The first acid test was does it look right on my 24" curves, sadly it does not, realistically 36" is about the lowest you'd want to go with these; up until now I've limited myself to stock in the 60-65' region and that has bode well for visuals.
It's sad because they are impressive beasts, even with the low end fidelity and despite the chunky detail roll exceptionally well but they are tight as a camels....you know the rest in the curves. A train of 15 is going to need so much HP to get it around they'll be an operational nightmare, even with DPU.
The other visual aspect concerns the overall train rather than the individual cars in curves, my sidings are in the region of 15-17' long, with these puppies you'll only get 13-15 in one train, plus a loco front and rear, it's a long train but visually doesn't look long. On the other hand my Bethgons, covered hoppers and tank cars will get 22-25 cars in the same length so they will 'look' the longer train.
The last experiment was the fidelity, I reasoned that the solid grabs could be cut free and wire replace them or the whole end ladder area be replaced with a fold up etch and wire grabs. To be blunt the solid grabs are a bit clumsy, a pin wash would certainly help and add shadow to the back and create a visual trick to the eye to give some depth.
That train of thought then led to the conclusion, do I really need to? What's the best (if I were to make up a rake) ratio of cost/benefit/satisfaction that could be achieved, not just Autoracks but all stock. Yes up close the grabs are clumsy, but then I stepped back to normal viewing distances and to be honest you really can't tell.
In short, if you're viewing distance is a reasonable distance then a lot of the fidelity is lost and a waste of money and you might as well stick with cheaper stock. I'll keep these two if for nothing else than paint and weathering pigs, they might get the odd run in a manifest and I'll just have to squint of look away when they go around the curves.
Hopefully tomorrow my Bethgon set will arrive, I'll need to get a bit more road bed and track down to lay them all out in the planned consist, just the excuse I need to do something out here........
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..... I know, I'll just leave now....)
