For my knowledge bank ... #1 Are the Accurail HO cars (40' boxcars) fairly true to prototype in detail and measurement? #2 Did Frisco have any 37/40' gons? #3 How about 40' therebouts flats?
I'll take a stab at Sherrel's questions. Others please chime in - I know many of us have Accurail cars in our fleet. 1) My impression (from comments by the "experts" I've seen) is that the Accurail cars are indeed "fairly" true to the prototype. Given they are a major marketer of HO cars they do a good job in my opinion, though often many details are incorrect for a specific prototype - frames, roofs, ends, doors, trucks, etc. But, they look good, are decorated nicely, don't cost much, and go together well. I have several. An area where Accurail often strays from reality is in paint schemes - they often do cars in various road names that never had such cars. For example, they plan to offer their very nice 40ft gon in Frisco colors. But, the SLSF never had that type of gon (11 panels). 2) Yes! Most of them were 40ft USRA composite gons, many of which were rebuilt with steel sides. There also was a series of 200 12-panel steel cars built in 1951. Except for the wrong number of panels, the Accurail car sort of looks like this one. I bet they will number it SLSF 55000-55199 for this series. The USRA gon has been modeled nicely by Intermountain, Walthers, and Walthers Proto 1000. Most of Frisco's gondolas were of 50ft or greater length. 3) Yes! There were a bunch of 42ft steel cars, from the 1920's, and again from the 1950's. The Red Caboose car is your best bet in HO. Others please jump in with comments! Ken
Mostly late steam, early diesel - say 1940's and 50's. I like the older type freight cars not exceeding about 45 feet.
