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Guys,

I need to leverage your collective brain power, as there's a ton of knowledge here on the forum that I hope might help my plight...

 

I have one of the Premier RF&P Berkshire steamers that MTH made (20-3292-1 from the 2007 Vol 2 catalog), and while MTH made it with freight sound effects, I really want to run her with some heavyweight passenger cars. MTH has yet to make any premier-level RF&P heavyweights, so I'm trying to gauge my options.

 

I have a friend who is willing to sell me his set of MTH Railking RF&P madisons (30-69097 from the 2010 Vol 1 catalog), but I'm concerned that they may be noticeably out of proportion and detail against the Premier steamer (which is a beauty and is highly detailed). He's not local, so I can't just take the engine and look at it next to the cars before I pull the trigger. 

 

I'm wondering if any of you know if any other manufacturer has made an MTH premier-grade set of RF&P heavyweights. I'm reasonably sure that Lionel has not, but I'm not nearly as sure with the other manufacturers (and their websites don't seem to give a good tool for searching their back catalogs like MTH and Lionel). K-Line comes to mind as a possible place to look, as I know they did a fantastic run of Crescent Limited madisons. But again, it's hard to search, and K-Line doesn't google well.

 

So, bottom line: anyone know of any good RF&P relatively high quality madison cars? Does anyone know if the RailKing cars in question will cut it next to a premier level engine?

 

Many thanks,

Rafi

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Thanks for the idea, Bill. I had discounted those streamlined cars for two reasons, but your comment has me reconsidering...

 

The reasons were:

1). Those cars (20-6577) were from the early-ish days of MTH, and my anecdotal experience (I own a Powhatan Arrow aluminum premier set from 1996) with cars of that vintage has been that they lack the detail of later MTH Premier and even Railking cars. I've since realized, however, that the RF&P cars are from 2001, and not 1996, so perhaps they are better than the Powhatan Arrow set.

 

2). Did the RF&P run Berkshires into the streamlined era? I had thought that it wouldn't be very prototypical to run streamlined cars behind an early 20th century steam locomotive.

 

Rafi

The RF&P classified their Berks as freight engines.

 

Since the RF&P mainly served as a connection between the SAL and ACL at Richmond and the Pennsylvania at Potomac Yard in Northern Va, it was probably much more common to see SAL, ACL, FEC, and PRR passenger cars on the RF&P than actual RF&P passenger cars. There were a number of NY to Florida passenger trains that were jointly operated by the PRR, RF&P, ACL, SAL, and FEC.  There were cars from all those roads mixed in to several of the trains passing through the RF&P.

 

Ken

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