Passenger Cars

While I totally agree on the available variety from the various manufacturers, the main obstacle to passenger traffic on the Allegheny Eastern is cost. Our accounting department cannot justify the expenditure. Even on E-Bay these cars are beyond the roads budget. At $20 - $30 a throw a prototypical consist works out to $200 - $300 per train. Most of my locomotives were purchased for a quarter of that! On the other hand I have seen Kato's Broadway Limited for as a little as $169. At $17 a car, that's almost a steal. Despite that deal, even the old "Rivarossi" passenger cars from the old days are now considered "classics" and fetch almost the same prices so even kitbashing or modifying the older cars is prohibitive. I have noticed that even the kits are pricey. For the time being, at least, passenger service on the All East is handled by two very short (5 car) passenger consists. Both were purchased as sets at low cost.

Wrong RPO?

Well written as always. But the PRR RPO on the picture is not from Micro Trains as far as I can see. Isn't it Kato's RPO-baggage car from Broadway Limited?

Erik Wejryd

N Scale passenger equipment article...

John, you did a great job with the article and hope that manufacturers continue to add to the choices available for N scale 'n'thusiats.

You didn't mention any of the other available choices for the 'non' ready-to-roll crowd.  The brass car sides and core kits which can create specific prototype models which 'may' never be made by the RTR only manufacturers.  That's okay because it seems that many of todays N scale modelers are about immediate gratification... not the grind of actually building something that has seemingly microscopic parts.

I'm a big fan of Kato because their format of creating an entire train is more likely to include those unusual 'one-of' types of passenger equipment which would not likely be offered as an individual model.  Their method of 'averaging out' the overall tooling costs for their offerings also allows for a more economical 'per piece for the whole set' to the end user.  Price is the main trade-off versus the more detailed Intermountain Railway Co models... which also requires the end user to wait... sometimes... years to complete an entire consist. 

I still don't have a complete IMRC set of passenger equipment... though I'm getting close to having a Panama Limited consist when the RPO and Baggage cars are [hopefully] released in 2012.  The only thing about this Panama Limited consist is that it may not be prototypically accurate either... and will have cost me over twice as much as a Kato version could have been purchased at. 

In retrospect... at least we have choices now that were not available 10 years ago.