Paul, your position on this is quite valid, different strokes for different folks, as they say. Your thing is locos and decals, mine is freight cars and trailers. There are many good things about the Atlas cars, and I would never say don't buy any. But this is the freight car equivalent of an EL GP35 represented by the original Athearn design with bloated hood and too-tall front windows, minus DB to boot. For many years, the only flush-deck car on the market was Athearn's, which also had the high-mounted deck problem. That's why there were numerous articles over the years in the hobby press about lowering the deck, why A-Line produced a kit to facilitate deck-lowering, and why Athearn takes care to point out that their re-released version of this car in r-t-r has a lower deck. The original release of the Accurail/Customrail car also had this problem, and there was at least one article that dealt with that car. So it appears that for many modelers, the design fails McClellan's "good enough" test. A scale 6" in HO is huge, if it makes the bolster visible when it shouldn't be. Paul B Paul makes some valid points about the minor inaccuracies of the Atlas car, but I'd be willing to be 99.9% of the people out there would never notice these. Seriously, do people really notice a scale 5.5" height difference? (that's .063" actual). Compare the Walthers and Atlas car photos I posted a few weeks back: http://lists.railfan.net/erielackphoto.cgi?erielack-01-06-08/atlas-walth ers-side.jpg When loaded with trailers, flying by in an NY-100, is it really that bad? If your focus is detailed piggyback operations, then yes, this probably should be a concern to you. If not, they're beautiful cars that are just fine for "the rest of us." Allen McClelland (of Virginian & Ohio fame) has a rule about "good enough" - if it captures the look and feel of the prototype (even if not "exactly" correct). As someone pointed out to me, it's virtually impossible to have your models 100% correct across the board. In this case, you can have super-accurate piggyback cars, but will your diesels and cabooses be equally accurate? My personal focus is motive power, and I enjoy making my diesels as accurate as possible. The freight cars are but a player in the "operations game", and while I'd prefer them to be as accurate as possible, they're merely "playing cards" in the deck of operations. If it "looks good" then it works for me! What I'm trying to say, I guess, is "to each their own." If you have to have 100% correct pig flats, grab a Dremel and have at it! :) But if not, the Atlas cars are just fine. Heck, I still have a large fleet of "old school" Accurail flats that still look nice to me - the only modifications I made to those was to redecal the correct typeface lettering on those (everyone here knows my feelings on inaccurate lettering :) - Paul The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List http://EL-List.railfan.net/ To Unsubscribe: http://Lists.Railfan.net/erielackunsub.html ------------------------------
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