I just bought a set of eight IHC smoothside passenger cars through E-Hobbies.com. I had my eye on these for some time. I needed some Phase 1 Amtrak cars to match an F7A locomotive I got last Christmas, and these fit the requirement and budget. The set normally sells for about $120 ($15 per car), but this one set was just $80 ($10 per car)on E-Hobbies. They had the exact same set for other railroads at $101. I don't know why this one was so much less.
They arrived today. They look great, and seem to run pretty well. I am intrigued by the design where the window plastic is attached to the roof, and snaps into the bottom of the cars. They are pretty easy to open up. They have horn and hook couplers, which is OK because my locomotive came with those as an option. The cars had no weights, so I've added some of my own. I was a bit disappointed to see the trucks were just snapped in with a small tab, not screwed, and two or three of them wiggle a bit too much.
In my estimation, they were worth the $10 per car cost, but I don't think the overall quality can justify the full retail price.
------------------ Trust God, love your neighbor, and never mistake opinion for truth. -Mr. Toy
The IHC interoirs are excellent. They are fairly easy to paint and the extra details really look good. I'm installing interiors for my Santa Fe Hi-Level cars and so far I've done a diner and the coach interiors are on the way. If anyone is planning to do Hi-Levels or Superliners here are some tips on the diner. Use two diner interiors. Separate the seating area from the kitchen on both and put these sections together to form a full upstairs seating area, similar to the Superliner diners. There is no upstairs floor in the Train Staion Products Hi-Levels, so I used some styrene strips to hold the interior in place. Discard the two kitchen parts unless you want to use them for the downstairs. I didn't, because there are no windows (except for the two vestibule doors) so you can't see the interior. Plus all that downstairs room is great to hide a battery for interior lights (I don't like track powered lighting because no matter how great your connections and no matter how clean your track is some lights will flicker, even with complicated constant lighting hook ups). If you are using the IHC cars the interiors are a simple drop in instalation and no modifications are needed. Hope this info can help anyone.
Diner Interior
Posted by Chuck Walsh (Member # 677) on :
There was a time when Modelexpo sold the Rivarossi 1930's smoothsides for $12.88. If these are the same, yes to-too 2-two lite. I dumped my set for the 1920 heavyweights and these cars weigh in at 5.50 oz, here again too lite.You may try inserting conton fibers off a Q-tip or cotton ball to tighten up the truck tab, it works.
