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I Wanna Make This In Minecraft! Because I Love Csx Et44ah But That Model Is Pretty Amazing And Very Majestic! 😊

8:56 - The lettering says "Engine Water Sight Inside" and "Engine Cooling Water" Dang, but I miss seeing these big brutes. SP 9335 is a little unusual in that it was never rebuilt or derated with a 3,000 hp 16-cylinder prime mover.

For an Athearn RTR car, this is a fine model indeed, a whole world away from the "blue box" kits of previous generations. This car represents the "1st generation" of the ACF Center-flow cars, whether they were the 2970, 4650, or 5250CF models. The biggest spotting detail is the inverted angle iron welded along the car side near the top, a couple of feet below the top chord. The "2nd generation" of these cars built in the 1970's did away with this brace in exchange for lengthwise beads on the top chord itself. Built in the 1960's, these cars would all be over 50 years old and should have been retired by now. There may still be a few 2nd generation cars in service though. Most of the cars in service now were built in the 1980's and later, and other manufacturers have also adopted similar designs such as Freightcar America, Greenbrier, Trinity, and others. (There is a combined 1.4 miles of older 2-bay cars sitting in storage on the Georgetown Railroad in Round Rock and Georgetown, TX) 3:27 - the illegible writing says "Brake Release" 3:38 - the illegible writing says "CAUTION: Close hopper doors (gates?) and roof hatches before car is moved"; the "illegible writing" in the circle is the manufacturer logo, "acf" 4:00 - the "more details" is something you need to acquaint yourself with, the COTS/LUBE stencil, aka the "Consolidated Stencil". COTS stands for Clean, Oil, Test, Stencil - the stencils were a brief summary of when the car last had those tasks performed on it. If you can find a real one (or just do an image search for one), you'll see it includes the car's reporting marks, three letter codes for the location the work was done, and dates in the same format as the Blt date on the car side. These were required on all rail cars from the 1970's onward, though the format of the stencils changed over the years. Microscale offers decals for the various arrangements. With the prevalence of digital data, the stencils were no longer required from 2016 onward. One thing missing from this model is the ACI or Kartrack stencil, one on each side. Railroads and private owners began applying them to equipment around 1968 and they were mandatory by the early 70's. The system failed to live up to its purpose and was abandoned about 1979, but the useless stencils remained on cars sometimes until the ends of their lives.

One of the major reasons Conrail rostered so many of these cars was that the largest of the failed northeastern railroads that were folded in to Conrail in the 1970's also owned these cars - Pennsylvania and New York Central (via Penn Central) and Erie Lackawanna. Detriot was not the only auto-related location for rail traffic as parts manufacturers were scattered throughout the country, and assembly plants were located in several different states. Most of these cars are gone now or nearing the end of their allowable interchange lives, but I recall seeing plenty of these enroute to and from the southern border to supply assembly plants in Mexico from the 90's onward. On the ends, WABCO PAC II indicates that unlike traditional shorter cars, this car is equipped with independent truck mounted brake systems, in this case the WABCOPAC II system. (You can Google it and find drawings and information on it.) Also, the brakewheel would only be able to set the brakes on the B truck. The SPRG D-5 stencil is the same kind you've described multiple times before - it's the spring arrangement in the trucks. 5:50 - Plate B, Plate C, Plate E, Plate F, etc refer to the clearances of a car's dimensions. You should be able to Google "AAR plate clearance diagram" and you'll get multiple hits with dimensioned drawings. 6:05 - The door openers don't flip left or right, they are turned clockwise or counterclockwise as many turns as necessary to either fully engage or disengage the latch bars on either side. When the latch bars are disengaged, one can then pull or push them as needed to rotate the vertical locking bars on the doors. Pulling them will lever the doors unsealed, whereupon they can then be rolled to their open positions. On the real cars, they'd be equipped with a metal security seal - they won't prevent unauthorized entry, but a consignee will know if the door has been tampered with if he receives a car with broken seals. 6:14 - The illegible writing says "Close this door first" 6:29 - Indicating valve? Really? You've ID'ed this same thing in previous videos - it's the retaining valve handle. 6:45 - The lower group of illegible writing is the original reporting mark and number of the car before it was repainted for Conrail (PC in this case) You will find on more and more of these RTR boxcars that the manufacturers have taken pains to even paint the roofs correctly to match the prototype - either a plain galvanized finish like on this model, or a roof painted to match the car sides, or a galvanized roof with "overspray" along the edges where they meet the car sides. The diagonal paneled roof pattern has been an industry standard for generations. 7:48 - Unidentified valve. Note that there is no brake cylinder - each truck has its own complete brake system mounted on the trucks, two mini-cylinders per truck. (This is why you saw there was no brake rigging detail - there isn't any.) I believe the unidentified valve is a regulating valve that may be needed for this system as the reservoir has to supply air to four times as many brake cylinders, even though they're smaller. What's odd is that it is modeled as tied directly to the trainline with no other lines out of it. I am unable to locate a complete system diagram. One thing to bear in mind is that there were different manufacturers of car cushioning systems (Hydra-cushion, Keystone, etc) and Tangent actually applied the correct systems to appropriate cars, so the underframe of one might not look like that of another. Also, not all cars used truck mounted brake systems, so there will be differences there as well. There are now also at least four different manufacturers of 86 foot boxcar models.

The car shown in this video is generally known as a "foobie" - it's fictitious. Either no such car ever existed, or it did exist but not in the road name shown. This appears to be one of the former - it is supposed to represent a Pullman-Standard 60 foot, 70 ton auto parts boxcar, but the closest prototype is the Conrail X82 class of boxcars, and even then the side panels, side sills, and the tops of the ends are different. This particular model bears reporting marks SSW 62862. This would make it part of of a class of 100 ton hi-cube cars of class B-100-48, series 62825-62924 built by PC&F in 1979. Those cars look nothing like the model, despite the faux "excess height" and Plate F indicators. (The car should bear a circular "Exceeds Plate C" stencil.) A closer match might be the B-100-30 class of cars built by ACF in 1971, but the ends are totally different as are the three panels left and right of each door. 2:00 Tangent is not the only manufacturer of 86 foot auto parts boxcars - Athearn cars can still be had, though I believe they still use older tooling, Scale Trains produces excellent quality models, and now Class One Model Works has entered the competition. In fact, COMW is now (Jan 2025) offering a number of their auto parts cars via an online giveaway contest. (I've entered, you should too!) 2:51 - those are not rivets along the top of the end, they're several square inches in size each, I believe there would be internal load restraint attachment points inside an actual car, except Pullman Standard cars do not have this feature AFAIK 3:50 - "Cushion Car" does not refer to how a car performs on less than ideal track, it means the car is equipped with an underframe or draft gear designed to absorb end impacts 4:48 - Yes, 2 inch HF Comp Shoes indicates the car is equipped with 2 inch thick, high friction composition brake shoes.

In your intro, you mentioned 80 foot gondolas. Where did you obtain that figure? I'm aware of only one extraordinarily long experimental gondola built by North American for the Southern Pacific in the early 1960's, and I don't believe it was ever repeated. I believe the longest gondolas today at 65-66 feet interior length. In the 1980's, MDC/Roundhouse (now part of Athearn) began producing their version of this car. For their time, they were excellent models though lacking the end reporting marks and brake info. I ended up buying one of their introductory sets of 12 different road numbers and still have them to this day. At some point they'll get upgraded trucks and wheels, and the stirrup steps on the corners will need to be replaced. The Walthers Mainline version appears to be a slightly upgraded version of these popular gondolas built by Thrall. (Subsequent orders were built by Berwick, Greenville, and Bethlehem.) These are fairly simple and (as demonstrated) rugged cars. Unfortunately, that striking paint scheme faded quickly as many of the cars were used for scrap metal service. Within about 20 years many looked ready for scrapping their own selves.

Tangent does indeed produce some of the best rolling stock on the market today. Built in the mid 1960's, these cars would have been some of the last gondolas built for the Pennsylvania RR before the ill fated 1968 Penn Central merger. By the early 1980's, all three paint schemes would have been roaming the rails at the same time - PRR, PC, and CR. Some of PRR cars were repainted into the green Penn Central scheme but not many. These cars aged rapidly with some being scrapped long before their first 40 years of service. The last of these would have been removed from interchange service by the mid 2010's. The "front" of cars you refer to in your videos is more accurately referred to as the B end (B for brakewheel). I'm not sure about why you mention coupler cut levers not extending from one one side of a car to the other, as they have never been so equipped in North American practice. As for the stenciling on the ends, SPRG D3 refers to the spring arrangement on the trucks. The corrugations on the car sides are exquisite. In the late 20th century, models with corrugated sides were manufactured with smooth interiors as the technology didn't exist then to produce sides of this quality. The only way to get corrugations inside and out was through expensive brass models. I used to know what the Conrail letter stencils represented but have long since forgotten. Many of these cars have either S or W stencils. The microscopic lettering above that says "This car equipped with fold down clips and holes in top chord. Do not cut additional holes in car." The PC reporting mark and number in the upper right corner does indeed note the Penn Central identity before the Conrail repaint. In describing the brake components, you pointed to the brake cylinder and said "we have the actual mechanical brakes which activate if the wheel is held down". That made no sense - the linkages are all mechanical and operate either from brake cylinder action or operation of the brake wheel at the end of the car. Pointing to the triple valve, you said "I believe this is how the air brakes are locked on". The triple valve both supplies and releases air to the brake cylinder via changes in air pressure in the trainline.

sounds legit... like it's thrown a bearing.

I agree, walthers couplers are strong and don't let go, might not look the best but will out perform most high end couplers

Apparently these also are equipped with PowerPaks but are not immediately activate upon use of the locomotive. AUX 12 needs to be set to “Power Pack Control” for it to work.

Very cool!

The Canadian cylindrical grain cars are a completely different car than this one - the Canadian cars and their clones are all 4-bay cars and were built relatively recently (1970's). This particular model is of a much older car (blt 1962). The H44 class stencil marks this as a former Pennsylvania RR car that went to Penn Central and then Conrail. As clean as it is, this would represent the car as it might have appeared in the late 70's or early 80's after the Conrail paint job. As these mostly operated up north, they aged brutally in just a few years with some looking almost completely rusted over by the end of their lives in the early 2000's. As for the holes in the ends of the car, this is typical of cars where the end slope sheets are not immediately accessible. The later ACF center-flow cars that succeeded these also had them. They allow visual inspection of the slope sheets and if necessary, a very small cramped physical access to them if any work needed to be done. They are also common hideouts for stowaways. There is no way to see all the way through the car, so one retrofit, if it's possible, would be to disassemble the car and glue or tape in place a painted piece of cardstock to represent the slope sheet on each end.

Except for the separate grabirons on the doors, the overall appearance is that of a kit version of a Walthers autorack I assembled about 30 years ago. I didn't weigh it but it definitely had some heft to it. Regarding the data on the flatcar, the blt date would only apply to the flatcar portion, not the rack assembly attached to it as fully enclosed racks like this weren't in use in the mid-70's, though open racks were. As for the PLH 21D designation, you will see similar marks on ALL TTX equipment - flatcars, gondolas, boxcars, etc. That is the company's class designation and it is confusing as heck. For this particular car, the PLH portion indicates the flatcar was built by Pullman Standard, it is of a low deck design under 39 inches above the rail, and it is equipped with hydraulic end-of-car cushioning. The 21 portion indicates a flush-deck car body with universal draft pockets. The D is supposed to indicate a sub-class but I cannot locate what it is for that letter. Note the indentations in the flatcar sides above the trucks. In order to accommodate the "Lo-Dek" feature for the tri-level rack assembly, the car rode lower than standard height flatcars and so needed the cutouts for truck access. These particular cars also rode on 28 inch wheels as opposed to the bi-level TTGX cars with standard height decks that rode on 33 inch wheels.

So, a little history on this model. This particular caboose has been offered by Athearn since at least the 1960's, first as yellow box and blue box kits, then RTR in the 21st century. The one problem with the "upgrading" of these older designs is that they still use the same tooling for the bodies, even on fictitious models. This one is not fictitious - it's based on a very early ATSF caboose (or waycar as the Santa Fe preferred to call them). Built in the late 1920's by American Car & Foundry (ACF), this was even before the Santa Fe began assigning class designations to them. The one major shortcoming that I've read about models of these early "pre-class" cars is that they had toolboxes on both sides. The trucks are also incorrect for the model - these cars were equipped with solid bearing trucks like the ones shown but with leaf spring suspension, something Athearn only produces in a roller bearing style for their bay window cabooses. For added detail, the distinctive SP "frog-eye" signal lights could be purchased and mounted atop the cupola. So many caboose cars were unique to particular roads, so it was not practical to offer all the different types out there. Manufacturers just guessed at a popular looking model, or made one up, and then painted them up for every road name imaginable. They must have sold tens of thousands of them over the years, and other manufacturers produced clones of them as well. (I've actually got this very car produced by AHM back in the 1970's stored away somewhere.) Southern Pacific built hundreds of cupola style cabooses in the C-40-1 through C-40-3 classes, but they were home-built. AFAIK, only Rapido produced a variety of C-40-3's recently, and before that, one had to rely on brass for road-specific accurate models. "In 1954-55 eight cabooses received the special 'Trailer Flatcar Service' scheme, of silver paint and red/black billboard lettering. Of these eight, 7 were C-40-3's #1069, 1076, 1096, 1097, 1147, 1181 and 1201, (The other was C-40-1 #1031). These were used on the then new piggyback trains between Los Angeles and San Francisco and lasted into the 1960's." As for terminology, the item you refer to as a chimney is called a smokestack or smokejack. Also, "shunting" is the UK word that we here use for switching. The retired caboose role you mentioned is that of a "shoving platform". The conductor or brakeman will ride the shoving platform rather than hanging on to the end of a car when a shoving move is needed that could be miles long. For those who don't know, in railroad parlance, shoving is what we'd normally call pushing, the opposite of pulling.

The Pennsylvania RR boxcar classes began with X, so yes, X50B is the class of the car, and most PRR cars were home built. The car is stenciled with a blt date in 1957, so the 1965 date on the left would be the last major "shop" or re-weigh date. The location would typically be a 3-letter code indicating the city where the shops were located (eg PHX = Phoenix, SAC = Sacramento, etc) so I had to look up the P-57 designation. It turns out that was the scale location, from P-1 to P-171. P-57 refers to the scales located in East Altoona, PA. The car was likely re-weighed but not shopped, and the running board would not have been removed at that time. NEW cars were banned from having them installed after October, 1966 and existing ones would have remained in place until the 1970's. The car is equipped with roller bearing trucks which is incorrect for this car. They were all equipped with solid bearing trucks and would have kept these until replaced with roller bearing ones in the Conrail era. The logo used on the car is the "shadow Keystone" one. The paint scheme would be accurate for the late 1960's and maybe even the early 70's, though more and more cars would have been re-stenciled or re-painted for the failed Penn Central. By the late 70's and 1980's the car would likely have been completely re-painted for Conrail and could have remained in service into the early 2000's before having to be mandatorily retired from service by 2007. Also of note is your friend had to resort to using underset couplers to compensate for droops in the couplers, instead of just correcting the source of the drooping. Also, a Google image search will result in multiple hits of this type of car in both its original paint scheme and in Penn Central paint.

I preordered this locomotive recently (DC silent), very excited for it to come in June!

Weo really nice 19 pasenger cars

What?? No review? I still enjoyed the video. Happy New Year to all. Dave

Highball the H-BARPAS (manifest haul - Barstow, CA to Pasco, WA)

I grew up with these cars, both SP and SSW. (There's even a picture of me somewhere as a kid hanging on the the ladder of one that had derailed on an industrial spur in my hometown.) The model represents the later version of the car as indicated by the two lengthwise beads running along the top panel of either side. With the earlier 1960's and 70's models, this panel would have been smooth while a length of angle iron would have been welded (face down) along the length of the car, about even with where the inner ladder supports intersect with the side panels. These 4650 cubic foot cars were extremely popular as the center sill does not run through the car, with longitudinal loads transfered through the structural members along and just behind the bottoms of the car sides, resulting in an open-box frame arrangement. This resulted in "clean" bays with uninterrupted flow of product while unloading. As for the loading hatch covers, they are supposed to be separate sections, one for each bay. Some of the most common ACF cars would have been the 2970CF 2-bay cars (typically sand or cement service), the 4650CF 3-bay ones (grain, salt, minerals, etc), and the larger 5250CF 4-bay cars mostly used for plastic pellet service. The line molded under the edge of one side is indeed the trainline. It had to be mounted where it is because there's no way to run it through the bays. Also, unlike conventional freight trucks, the ones on covered hoppers, tank cars, etc are specially designed with their own actuating cylinders to operate the brake beams, since there was no way to mount brake rigging under the car to operate the equipment on both trucks.

In this day and age, what manufacturer puts a fake beacon on the roof?

I like Hiawatha hobbies. I've got a few nice pieces from them over the past year. I really enjoyed this video. I miss that lug, lug, lug sound from the big GEs. Very sharp model. Great job. Looking forward to seeing more Norfolk Southern pieces in your reviews. Thanks. Dave

First to comment! What is the best brand to buy sd40-2 DC??

Very attractive sd70mac model and the dark future "boxcar logo" applied to this CSX locomotive is interesting, CSX rostered a large number of sd70mac engines rostered in the 4500, 4700 and 4800 classes. The sd70 series from EMD has proven to be very successful and the sd70mac was the first member of the sd70 class to be equipped with AC traction, I hope to see more improved quality detailed models of the sd70mac offered from Athearn Genesis in the future.

Very impressive and attractive sd60m model, the sd60 series served as the successor model to the issue plagued sd50 series built by emd during the mid 1980s and the sd60 series proved to be reliable and successful. Athearn Genesis has offered many releases of the sd60m and Conrail purchased the models sd60, sd60m and sd60I demonstrating that the sd60/ gp60 series were a popular locomotive class.

I really love the Dash 9's to be honest. The closest we have to these locomotives if the Class 60 that is more akin to the Dash 8 in terms of sound and power. Made by Brush Traction though.

The Econami is at a reasonable price,not a lot more than a nonsound decoder.Wouldn't that be better?You can always turn it down or off.A suggestion on presentation,is a cover for the table maybe.Or a turntable like Jlwii.

Another nice video review. I believe the Athearn Genesis locomotives are the best bet. Dave

Nice looking unit, they run pretty solid as I have the AC4400CW version and they run like a champ. Curious, are you going to use the factory board for the ESU decoder or go with a Decoder Buddy?

That's a great looking unit. I think the Athearn real chain looks way better than the ScaleTrains plastic one, and also Athearn paint jobs tend to be a bit more crisp especially when you have a lot of thin lines like on the BNSF stripes. Hard to pick which brand's Dash 9 I like more overall though.

Do a video with trains running on your layot or do a video with your full colection.

#300 was involved in a wreck

Very nice model! I noticed most of my GE models are ScaleTrains and most of my EMD models are Genesis lol.

Another excellent video. I don't even model BNSF and I want one of these locomotives. Very nice . Good job sir.

16min crazy! Good video man.

Just got mine a few days ago. Solid model, just wish it had smoke and flashing ditch lights. Overall I’m satisfied with it. Also just found out Broadway has 1995 as well with smoke and flashing ditch lights.

Keep the reviews comming and good work! Been enjoying them!

These just went on sale at Lombard! Picked up 9708 DCC ready for $134! A Genesis for the price of a RTR!

Some of the volumes on Athearn( horn,bell,Dyn Brake)are loud out of the box.Each feature has a volume CV,so are easily adjusted.The motor can be turned up.There is an equalizer for more fine tuning.Better 'too loud' than too quiet.

Hey, congrats on getting Athearn's latest run of their tunnel motors, SD45T-2! The little tab you pointed out is part of the prototype. It's where the handbrake chain dangles from if you were to install a chain to the front truck brake cylinder. The box you referred to behind the fireman's side cab is the "positive traction control" cabinet that provided advanced traction controls to all trucks preventing wheelslip.

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Excellent review.

How about athearn genesis amtrak passenger cars

Athearn genesis amtrak passenger cars

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Review the cn ns and Csx dash 9.

Where are ups dash 8s now?

I seen 788 on a dash 9 duo manifest before.

Nice consist of UP, SP and leased power...pretty common site for trains coming out of Roseville heading towards Portola in the late 1990s after UP took control of SP.

Very nice work! 😊