Who runs 15" aluminum passenger cars?

100% right there with ya, pal!!

I have an O72 minimum curve layout, scale engines and freight rolling stock.  But I very much prefer the aesthetics of the shorter passenger cars on these 'sharp' curves.

As so many prior discussions have summarized, this is strictly a TEHO territory.  So I take nothing away from the 18"-21" crowds.  

But, I surely wish the bench-mark K-Line 15" cars had lingered longer before the company's demise.  I noticed that even WBB has zero....zip, nada, nuh-uh, nope....15" aluminum cars in their 2018 catalog....for which I WILL engage the B folks at April's York meet.

I 'spect there are a few more of us than this forum seems to portray.

Just MHO, of course.

Hang in there!

KD

My railroad mixes 15" and 18" cars in the same train. A casual glance and the train looks like all 18" cars.

All the time!  K-line, William's and Lionel.  Of significance, the Lionel postwar truck design causes a lot of drag so later engineering allows for longer consists.  The latest Lionel 15'' trucks are beautiful works of miniaturization.

   My eye perceives  and adapts to the short cars in the same way it accepts the look of 21'' cars on 072 curves.....no biggie.

Bruce

I run 15" and smaller.  I have a small layout with mostly tight curves and minimal clearances on the curves.  When I had larger curves on my floor layouts, I ran big passenger cars, butI really didn't like them all that well.  The 15" cars look pretty good on most layouts, and track well in most cases. 

I have a lot of these and enjoy them.  Lionel, K-Line, Williams, & Weaver.

I run the 15" cars ... they are good fun, nostalgic. The K-Line cars remain magnificent; the shadow strip cars from MTH and Lionel still look good. I don't mix them with longer cars, just enjoy the trains.

Jan

This post is so timely for me. I have all scale equipment, but I just got these 15" k line aluminum cars and they are perfect on my layout. My 18" are ok as well, but for the size of my layout the 15" cars look terrific. 

Also, for me it's tough to differentiate the difference between the 15" cars and pictures and videos I have seen of the fleet of modernism cars, which look short to me.  

I enjoy the 15” cars... I found some nice ones from the early 2000s with nice interiors.  I had some 21” but they were just too long. 

I really like the Lionell and Williams aluminum cars.  They are just the right size for my modest layout.

I only have six sets of passenger cars, five are 15”.  I Like them best.  K-Line, Williams, Lionel and MTH.  SF Super Chief, SP Daylight, UP, C,B&Q Blackhawk, NYC Empire State Express.

More pictures that made me realize that I can't tell much difference between the 15" fleet of modernism cars and pic if the real ones, could be the angles of pics, but still. 

    I love my 15" K-Line Hiawatha cars. Needed to do some work on them when I got them, but thanks to Brasseur Parts, they now look beautiful with full interiors to which I added even MORE passengers. I always wanted a Skytop Lounge Observation Car, and now I have one. The 21" cars would be too long, even for 72" curves. I wouldn't mind a set of 18" cars, though.

   John

That's the only passenger cars I run. Almost all are K-line. I was lucky enough to get some great buys on them and bought a lot of extra cars for long trains. The only one I switched out was a full vista dome car of the Milwaukee Road. It looked a little stubby compared to the same car from MTH. My layouts tightest curves are 072 but it seemed even the 18 inch cars didn't look very good on curves. Even behind my Erie Built FM the 15 inch cars look fine. My only non K-line passenger cars are Atlas RPOs. Also watch the "Little Joes" pulling the K-line 15 inch cars, they look good. Don

That is the only size that I run. Williams PRR Broadway Ltd set, and Lionel NYC 20th Century Ltd set, PRR Madison Car set, PRR Congressional set and CNJ Madison car set. They may not be scale but they are affordable and for my eyes they look very good running on my 28' x 14' layout. IMO if you want to go full scale you will pay far more and will need an even larger layout with very wide curves.

I have I think 2 sets from Lionel.

The NYC 4 pack and 2 pack meant to go with the PA-1 from around 1997, and some N&W cars (I think early-mid 90's) that I bought to use as an alternate train behind the Warhorse J (no, I didn't let it bother me that the J was weathered and the cars were not! )

-Dave

I do!

Here is the 20th Century Ltd pulled by an “AlexM re-worked” semi-scale Hudson.

Peter

Thanks guys and thank you to Don and Peter for the videos. Peter, I have had those exact cars since the 80's and they still look good. 

There is something about Aluminum passenger cars that I like. I will be looking for some coming up at the York train meet. 

Dave

I have a few, the old 2190W set from the 50's, the PWC CP F3 set and the PWC congressional set.  Plus I have the 15340  PRR South Wind set of six cars.  All Aluminum and the 15340 are the ones with full interiors and are really nice looking cars to me.

I run Williams 15 inch N&W Powhattan Arrow five car set with my Lionel Scale J Class.  It's not a scale train but looks Okay.  I run it for nostalgic reasons and do enjoy seeing it run .... especially at night with the room lights dimmed.  

The silhouette windows take me back to the 1950's/60s.  Anytime I need a fix from my childhood train days, I run these cars.

Dave, I have a set of the Williams Broadway Limited cars and they are a beautiful set.  I even ran them with scale passenger sets on opposing lines and they looked fine together.  Also a 15" set of Williams PRR heavyweights that I'll run with a semi-scale GG1.

I've never seen a train of any scale that I didn't like!

I have one set of 15" cars. Williams Canadian Pacific ABA F3s pulling 11 cars. In addition to the 7 original Williams cars a Lionel SS diner and other baggage and combines were added after relettering for CP.

Pete

I have no problem running 15" passenger cars or any other car or engine that's looks right on my 16x8 layout.  I do have some scale cars but I don't get hung up on scale. If the proportions look right to me That's all I need to care about.

All the time. I have the postwar congressional and Santa Fe Super Speedliner and wouldn't think of parting with either set. Like Chris, if it looks good to me, I run it. 

scale rail posted:

That's the only passenger cars I run. Almost all are K-line. I was lucky enough to get some great buys on them and bought a lot of extra cars for long trains. The only one I switched out was a full vista dome car of the Milwaukee Road. It looked a little stubby compared to the same car from MTH. My layouts tightest curves are 072 but it seemed even the 18 inch cars didn't look very good on curves. Even behind my Erie Built FM the 15 inch cars look fine. My only non K-line passenger cars are Atlas RPOs. Also watch the "Little Joes" pulling the K-line 15 inch cars, they look good. Don

Magnificent film, layout and trains, Don.

Arnold

For some reason I don't think my post was posted!  All my passenger sets are 15" sets-several Lionel, one K-Line, one MTH and several Williams sets.  Anything larger would overwhelm my small layout.  These sets  look and run fine.

We have a few sets of them. Not only are they great on small diameter curve layouts, when you can run a set on 104" or larger diameter curves the train looks spectacular as it just flows through the "S" curves and bends!

My largest curves are 042, so pretty much anything postwar (aluminum, Madison, Budd, 027 streamliners) is all I run. But I have added some modern era aluminum cars: Combine, Diner, Sleeper, Full Dome. 

Might be a silly question, but with all the threads about 21" scale (84') passenger cars, were real pre- and post-war era passenger cars all or mainly 84' in length. In other words, is a 15" (60') scale passenger car realistic or just a creation for O-Gauge model railroading? Not planning to buy anything bigger than my O27 passenger cars that run 11-13", just trying to get educated.

Some of the mail cars and baggage cars were 60 feet long.

My preference is to the scale cars but as you have said - there is a special charm to the beautiful 15" renditions by the several manufacturers. I have a few K-Line F.O.M. cars and recently sold the spectacular K-Line B&O set. I also have a mixed consist of their Canadian Pacific 15" cars along with the 5 car 18" set.  Will probably offer several of the 15" coaches for sale as I have a LONG train already now and the Lionel PW Scale F3's probably can't handle it!

I have two sets of Lionel aluminum 15" cars - NYC and Pennsy. Although I haven't run them in quite a while, they make a magnificent display!!!

15 inchers (and some 13" Madisons) are all I run (as well as almost all of the other operators I know). Lionel built a highly detailed series of 15 inch cars a number of years ago; not a lot of roads, but really nice cars, with aluminum construction, finished painted interiors, passenger figures, detailed sprung trucks, add-on metal details, etc. (the UP version shown). Kind of hard to find, but I've picked up a Calif. Zephyr, SF Super Chief and UP set from this series, all of which are extremely nice.

I've also taken newer Lionel aluminum cars that have finished interiors and mated those chassis with their interiors with shells from MPC era sets. (Illinois Central observation shown from the City of New Orleans set of 1985 shown.) The K-Line cars are also really nice (the North Coast Limited car shown), although their interior furnishings aren't painted.  I'm sure Lionel has 15" plastic cars planned for future release. Unfortunately, no doubt like the plastic 21" cars, they won't have painted interiors and figures included. 

I only run 15" on my home layout, with 060 and 048 curves, it looks right, runs well and allowed me to landscape closer to the tracks.

I have several 18 sets for the club layout, but they stayed packed in my bug out cases for my rundays.

c.sam posted:

 Will probably offer several of the 15" coaches for sale as I have a LONG train already now and the Lionel PW Scale F3's probably can't handle it!

Or... you could power a B unit like the real railroads did.

I have the Lionel Texas Special and N&W Arrow sets, 7 cars including the stationsounds dinners. Aluminum with finished interiors and passengers. I like them a lot but I wish Lionel made a Legacy N&W J Lionmaster size (with a can motor).

I love the 15" cars and as of now, I have complete sets of TS & MR; I have a mixed setofK Line, MTH & Lionel, in CP and I'm now working on buying more SF cars to complete a long consist, 

Still my favorites:

Jim

Lionel 15" California Zephyr - dome observation and baggage cars. The baggage car even has a baggage handler's desk and chair inside. Made with the late, great aluminum construction. It looks like real metal, because it is. 

I run 15 inch aluminum passenger cars with scale size engines. I have 072 curves so they look fine. I could run 18 or 21 inch cars but they look silly on 072 curves. Plus, since I don't have a massive layout, the 15 inch cars allow me to run a decent length train. The 15 inch cars look fine with scale size F3/F7s and PAs, but not so much with E units. The scale size PAs are about 16 inches, but the E units are longer, so they don't look quite right, at least to my eyes. On the bright side I model the Santa Fe, so name trains were pulled by F3/F7/PA units.

Very nice. I have a early postwar set of American Flyer aluminum streamlined cars. There is something about real metal.

I have an 072 Layout and prefer to run the 15 inch Passenger cars because I think they just look better taking the curves.  I have a couple of Williams 18 inch sets and I just don't think they look as good on the layout.  Attached is a video of my 1950 Lionel 773 Hudson pulling four modern era circa 1991 Lionel Madison cars on my layout and I think they look pretty good.

I used to run AMT aluminum cars on my 042 layout because they looked better than longer ones,

also they are more realistic than Lionel ones. They are abour 14"

BREEZINUP, your 15” sets really are very nice.  Would you happen to know the product numbers for the 4paks you have, if not too much trouble?  Thx

TedW posted:

BREEZINUP, your 15” sets really are very nice.  Would you happen to know the product numbers for the 4paks you have, if not too much trouble?  Thx

Did a little research here, but I think I found all of them. By way of background on the 15" cars (or 16", depending on how you measure) Lionel made 3 types of aluminum passenger cars (at least that's how I think of it). The traditional ones everyone is familiar with, which had silhouette strips; then sometime in the early 2000s they started making some sets (some of them 6-car sets) that had more or less traditional bodies but with detailed interiors and passenger figures (I know they made UP, Pennsylvania, Norfolk & Western and New York Central sets of this type, and there may have been another as well).

Finally, Lionel made a few sets with new, more highly detailed bodies and more highly detailed painted interiors with figures. (The bathrooms even have white sinks and toilets). These later sets had add-on metal details, highly detailed sprung trucks, etc., and (IMO) were the finest 15" passenger cars ever made by Lionel and second to none anywhere. There were only 5 of these type sets made, all cataloged in 2003 Vol. 1 and 2. It seems a lot of folks aren't aware of these sets, which may be partially because they were only made for one year.

There was one set of these highly detailed cars that came only in a boxed set with engines, and that was the UP set, No. 31712, the so-called 50th Anniv. set. It came with an A-B-A set of scale Alco PAs, which were beautiful, but looked too large for the cars. They would look great with 18" cars, but Lionel hadn't started making those yet at this time. I bought the set to get the cars, and sold the engines. One thing about this set is that it included 7 cars, because a sound diner was included in the set, which was pretty nice.

The other four sets were cataloged in 2003 with the four cars sets in Vol. 1 and the two car add-on sets in Vol. 2. You can Google these catalogs and find them. These sets are:

CB&Q California Zephyr - No. 15311 4-car set (baggage and 3 domes incl. dome observation); No. 29149 2-car add-on (2 sleepers)

Santa Fe Super Chief - No. 15312 4-car set (baggage, sleeper, dome and observation); No. 29152 2-car add-on (2 sleepers) (this set is really stunning with its smooth gloss aluminum roofs)

Delaware & Hudson - No. 15313 4-car set (baggage, 2 coaches and observation); No. 29155 2-car add-on (coach and dome)

Southern "The Southerner" - No. 15317 4-car set (combo, 2 coaches, observation; No. 29158 2-car add-on (baggage and coach)

I don't have either the D&H or the Southern sets, but I'm sure they're equally nice.

For the chassis and interior conversion on the Illinois Central set I used the cars of the No. 15340 Pennsylvania "South Wind" 6-car set. This is one of the sets with traditional exteriors but detailed interiors with figures, which work great with the older MPC era aluminum passenger sets. The design didn't change, so the bodies fit on the chassis' just like the originals.

Breezinup,  thank you so much for your time and trouble. I have copied this info for reference. Thx again.  TW

scale rail posted:

That's the only passenger cars I run. Almost all are K-line. I was lucky enough to get some great buys on them and bought a lot of extra cars for long trains. The only one I switched out was a full vista dome car of the Milwaukee Road. It looked a little stubby compared to the same car from MTH. My layouts tightest curves are 072 but it seemed even the 18 inch cars didn't look very good on curves. Even behind my Erie Built FM the 15 inch cars look fine. My only non K-line passenger cars are Atlas RPOs. Also watch the "Little Joes" pulling the K-line 15 inch cars, they look good. Don

Great video.  Great scenery, videography and effects.

Alan

@Breezinup

any chance you want to part with a northern pacific observation car?

great info - thanks

Just FYI, I just listed 3 14/15" AMT aluminum passenger cars on the bay for what I think

are pretty reasonable prices. If any forum member gets them I will give

a 10% refund on the purchase price.  My ebay is JGJG49

Williams Santa Fe Red Stripe, MTH & Lionel Union Pacific smooth side, Williams Amfleet & MTH N&W Powhatan Arrow.

I own a set of Williams Congressional cars, a Lionel PWC Congressional set, and the Lionel PWC set with the orange and blue CNJ Trainmaster. I have a new baggage car on order on the Bay.

These are the only aluminum cars I have. They are made by Williams.

I have the PW Santa Fe set with extra car, PW presidential set with extra car, UP mpc set with 8 or 10 cars and a williams SP daylight set with six cars.   All 15".  I prefer they eay they look on the track.

I've seen many sets of the newer, longer, detailed cars on layouts and they just don't appeal to me.   Plus, I never see any of those people walking around or talking.  They're always doing the same thing.  They seem stiff to me.  

I can't see the people in my cars which gives them more privacy.

I run two sets of postwar AMT streamline aluminum extrusions. These are 14 inches in body length and about 15 over the couplers. Both sets are Santa Fe one is drum headed for the Super Chief the other San Diegan. These fit my 12x14 layout with O-72 curves quite well and look at home behind a 2343 A-B-A set. 

Bogie

Ah, one of my favorite topics. While many have unlimited amounts of space in which to build a layout, many of us do not. Hence my reality. I for one am limited to using 15" long passenger cars by choice and design. My limitations restrict the amount of space I have for any layout.

It is also one of my personal bugaboos, in particular on the part of Lionel's creeping away from cars and locomotives requiring ever larger curves (042, 054, 060, 072 etc.). It is one of the reasons why I have not bought much of their newer products and have sought refuge in older products and other manufacturers' products.

So here's my plea: "HEY LIONEL----- NOT EVERYONE IS FOCUSED ON TOTALLY SCALE PRODUCTS! THERE IS A SIZABLE NUMBER OF US WHO ARE IN THE MARKETPLACE FOR SMALLER PRODUCTS CAPABLE OF BEING RUN ON OUR LAYOUTS (I.E. 036 curves)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree, that is why I stick to almost all prewar, I have some postwar. But almost everything I have 

will run on 027 except for one AF streamliner.