Intermountain has listed an HO scale model of a Pullman-Standard PS-1 40' boxcar in the "Ship it on the Frisco!" paint scheme as "In Stock" and "New Releases for July 2022": https://www.intermountain-railway.com/ho/html/45465.htm Rich
MSRP $42.95 ! Your dealer should give you a 20% discount, hopefully! Then tack on S&H and there goes your discount!
$43 isn't bad anymore. A lot of top level cars are up to $50-60 now. Street price should be around $35.
Okay, here's the thing. If you have the kind of layout where you are able to host regular op sessions, you do not need (and should not want) $50-$60 freight cars, because they get handled a lot, and all those little details that make them "worth" the prices they command wind up laying alongside the tracks somewhere. If it's just you running trains, and you know the value of the cars, you can be careful and handle them accordingly. It takes 6-8 people to run my railroad efficiently, and I know they try to be careful, but at the end of the day I'd still rather have them handling decades-old Athearn "shake the box" kit cars than museum-quality models. GS
Agree 100% GS! Decades ago, once I began operating and started sharing my layout with friends, I learned that durable is more important than detailed. Shortly after the creation of my KC&G concept, as soon as I set about making equipment, I began to avoid fragile details, and whenever possible started using cast brass for horns/etc. To this day my preferred rolling stock kits are older "Blue Box/MDC" type models. No way on God's green earth will I ever put P2K-type car into service with all those fragile plastic parts exposed to the handling and miscues that will take place. In fact, from a few years ago, I have an older P2K tank car that I was assembling, and as the fragile stuff kept getting added, I thought "no way these little scale plastic grabs and stuff will survive". I ended up boxing it up in a state suspended animation and I doubt I'll ever put forth the effort to finish it. OR, if I do, I will be leaving off details I can get away with that are more vulnerable. Last resort would be to replace handrails/etc with hand formed brass. Uh, nope. Not this year for sure. And so it sits. In the meantime, my spartan fleet of rolling stock keeps piling up miles... and even at that, I find molded-on corner steps and other stuff laying beside the track! I'll leave the uber-detailed models to others.