A new N Scale Flatcar for me!
Monday, April 28, 2008 at 12:25AM I picked up an Intermountain flatcar today in BN scheme. This is a great model, nicely detailed with crisp lettering and she runs as smooth as silk. The car features microtrains low profile wheels, wooden deck (plastic), brake system details including piping and nicely done molded open grabirons and brakewheel assembly.
N Scale Car Height
The car rides very low. The side sills of most prototype boxcars, gons and flatcars obscure the top segment of the wheels. Usually, the bottom of the side sill is level with the top of the truck side frame. Regrettably, not enough N Scale cars run at the correct height. Most N Scale versions show the top of the wheels as the car body rides too high. Manufacturers do this because they want to reuse existing floor assemblies rather than create new ones with recesses for the wheels and generally they don’t want to use low profile wheelsets.
Thanks Intermountain for realizing that carbodies mounted too high look unrealistic right out of the box. The Intermountain flat car looks great right out of the box.
Reader Comments (4)
"Regrettably, not enough N Scale cars run at the correct height."; too right man! I can only hope this model is one to raise the bar and show what can be done in n-SCALE, not n-gauge...
Dennis
I agree. Model trains riding high is usually the dead ringer of them being way out of proportion. Good craftsmanship.
It's been awhile since your last update...where are you?
It's an awesome flatcar, do you plan to add anything atop it as a load?
Once I get to the point of having a permanent layout space I can get into loads and such. For a little while longer, all my cars are safe in their boxes which usually aren't very load friendly.
Soon though!!
Coxy