PJB posted:Finally got the chance to open the boxes and take a look at my first ever Sunset/3rd Rail purchase. This post reflects my initial thoughts, as I haven't yet removed the styrofoam in the trucks and diaphragms or run them. I'll do a fuller review at some point in the near future.
First impression:
Optics have a way of making an initial impression. From the outer packing to the individual boxes in which each El Capitan passenger car is carefully packed in styrofoam and plastic wrap tied with red string, the whole thing screams 'quality.'
Each car exterior is a work of art. True, much of this can be credited to the looks of the prototype. But the proportions and details seem right. The vents, the hand-applied details and everything about the sides and top make these cars seem like Sunset found a way to shrink the real cars down from 1:1 to 1:48. And, the weight of these cars is very nice. Overall, very nice looking while sitting on the rails. Turning the cars over, however, I was a little surprised that the undersides have almost no detail. Undersides are, for the most part, flat smooth sheets of metal. I'm not someone who gets overly concerned about the underside of a car, so I'm not out-of-sorts over it. But by the same token, cars at a much lower price point provide some level of underside detail (from Lionel cars with some, to Atlas cars that are incredibly detailed), so this was unexpected.
...
Peter
Peter,
I used to collect old magazines & specifications on the real Santa-Fe Hi-Level cars before Scott imported the first run of these cars & the lower floor on the real cars were only supposed to be 17 5/16” above the top of the rails. That would mean that the underside of these cars would be even closer to the top of the rail. That must not have left much room on even the real cars to have a lot of equipment (or details) on the underside of the cars. Budd used the space above the trucks, under the upper level, at either end of the car for weather-proof enclosures for the air-conditioning equipment, electrical, air-brake equipment, water storage tanks & Caterpillar diesel generators, on each car.
These are just my opinion.
Thanks,
Naveen Rajan
