rex desilets posted:Big Jim posted:rex desilets posted:CSX Troy posted:If you're really lucky you may find one of these painted and decaled...why, you ask? Because only Champ made decals for them (H2a).
Not true. Here is a link to Great Decals. He makes an excellent set of N&W hopper decals in all scales.
Well, the site says they are new, so I may be forgiven for not knowing.
However...the decals are for the 2-bay cars. I have a few sets of those from other mfgrs; what am I gonna do for dimensional & weight data???
Rex,
IIRC, the Yoder cars are at least 10 years old and from what I have seen, the earliest runs were nothing more than factory painted brass bodies that were not lettered at all, nor did they come with trucks. They run about $150 - $175 each and still need trucks and decals. Even if you can get decals for any of the Yoder versions that may need them, to be honest the only examples I have seen that actually look good were done with dry transfers and those are no longer available. In fact, most N&W guys I know of in O scale hoard those dry transfers for some odd reason, even though they have plenty of finished cars to last their lifetime. I believe later runs of the H2a's did come factory lettered with Yoder trucks but those are usually about $325 - $375. The Yoder cars are an excellent, high quality model, but investing 20 - 30 grand in a model of an N&W coal train is just not feasible for me.
Also, even if you were good with the upfront cost, I have reservations about the weight of having 50 or more of these in a train along with the die-cast Atlas cars mixed in as well. I have a couple examples of most versions for testing, but If I get to pick, I would prefer to have them all in a high quality plastic version.