Intermountain Diners "Wow! Wow!"

[Nato]

    I recieved a S**t Pot of the new Intermountain diners,practically one of each road name. Holy C**p Batman. Unbeliveable. "The Best N Scale Passenger Cars" on the box lable is true. maybe a tie with Rapido who has fewer car types. Ok, now for the review. First off IM has modeled two different cars,Eastern a copy of an NYC Post War smoothside, and Western an SP prototype with the distinctive narrow long kitchen windows also found on GN lightweights. First the details. almost too many to mention. The little grabs that stick out from the car ends next to the diaphrams,very fragle, could be damaged,but wow. The marker light brackets modeled on the sides of the SP body style. Correct roof vents, and air conditioning hatches on the two car types. Freestanding roof grabs with indents at top for resting a ladder against the car sides. Interriors with tables,the window shades are less noticeable that on previous cars because they are positioned higher so they look almost raised up. The shades on the kitchen side (not isle) on the SP cars are a no no.                                                                                                                                                                 Now for the paint schemes which are all way over a 10 on a 1-10 scale. NYC post war Gray. Vunderbar, natural 9unpainted lower grabs to represent stainless steel. The prototype cars had a vestibule loading platform at the dining room end with a door on one side only. The molded on door handles are carefully painted silver on many of the cars.Pennsylvania Post War 3 stripe scheme. How do they do it? The two bottom beltrail gold stripes (printed on?)are cleanly seperated with tuscan showing between. PRR Fleet Of Modernism.My only complaint the tuscan and maroon colors still look a bit brown. All those gold stripes and the numbers wonderfully applyed. N&W.Nicely done, the micro micro size car numbers (scale size) in the correct slanted font ad a nice touch. Too bad they didn't do Powhatan Arrow logos on the sides.                          Illinois Central is drop dead beautiful.The car name is for one of 2 Pannama Limoted Pre War cars. A nice detail touch,silver (aluminum) painted areas below the kitchen doors on the skirts representin metal kick protection areas. Once again how do they do that? B&O blue and gray. Car neme AKRON,a name on a Post War car. The gold pin striping is wonderful. I will have to pull out my refrence books to see if the stripe below the windows is correctly positioned,leaving a thin blue line above the strip. I believe it is. The last Eastern car on my review is really Western, The Eastern body was used on a UP car as it more closely resembled their cars then the SP carbody. My car is numbered 4800 representing the roads first ACF Post War 1949 car (see Kato car).The paint scheme on the model features silver trucks making it later 1950's era. The railroad later applyed aluminum (stainless steel?) kick plates to lower diner door pannels. This is represented in flat silver color. I will now send a second post about the Western cars as this is alread too long. Nate Goodman (Nato).Salt Lake, Utah.

[Nato]

        Now for my review on the IM Western diners. As a passenger train fanzee and an Southern Pathetic (Pacific) kind of a guy I just had to get one of each of these cars in all the roads color schemes. The Golden State Limited bright red and silver car is a knockout. In addation to the car name  on the side and "Golden State" on the letterboard a small silver rectangle with readable fine size "Southern Pacific" in black is on the upper sides near the ends. Sunset scheme car.This car models the later version of the paint scheme,a red (too orange  on model) letter board stripe,no black stripes above or below the red stripe. The generic  Ball& Wing emblem on the car side with no train name. Black trucks on some cars ,Lark gray on others were common.Two tone gray scheme car,another wonderful modeling job.The word "Diner" in silver with black outlining on letterboards near the ends. Outlined road name on leetter board.Straight stripes .                         City Of San Francisco yellow gray car. IM got both the Armor Yellow and the Harbor Mist Gray colors spot on. The Southern Pacific road name in red has black outlining as does the car number. Even with my glasses on tt looked like blurred printing on "Diner" on the upper letterboard near ends,but an Optivisor revealed red lettering with the black outlines. Wozzers! Last car in review is Great Nothing (Northern). GN cars had similar long narrow kitchen windows so teh model while not perfect is a good stand in,better than the Con Cor car with its reversed sides. Nice color seperation,straight stripes (sometimes crooked on Con Cor)the natural unpainted stainless steel grabs also found on the UP and SP yellow cars adds a perfect prototype touch.  I highly recommend any or all of these cars,did not get NP as it did not match anything they had.                 Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[CBQ Fan]

I went with the NP because I need a diner and I knew they would be nice.  Replacing what feels like the wholehouse does not leave me much time for custom projects right now.

Awesome review Nato!!  Thanks.

[delamaize]

I'm planning on picking up one of the NPs. I am building a "close enough" 1957 NCL, and I am going to need one. whe big thing I wanna know is how close does it come to the walthers cars? I already got a Baggabe and 10-6-6 sleeper I bought ny mistake. I wanted to buy some rapido stuff, but I guess the colors are really off, from what I understand, they (rapido) colors they used are strait from the offical paint chips from the NPHS. Where all the others out there are taken from pictures of cars out on the road, so faded with age. it SUCKS because I really like the Rapido stuff, and I don't wanna spend hours repainting coaches trying to make them all match. Not to mention my airbrush skills are not exactly good.

[CBQ Fan]

Mike,

I sold off all my Walthers cars when I got the Rapidos.  Rapido color is much more vivid and the color  and cars just look so much better than Walthers.  My WOT baggage cars look great with the Rapidos.

[AlbertSpor]

Hi,
I am dredging this topic up to ask @Nato about the colors on the SP Golden State Diner.
Is the red closer to a Daylight red, verses the orange-ish scarlet that IMRC uses on their Sunset/General Service scheme cars?

Thanks
Albert Spor

[Nato]

     Having not viewed any Golden State cars in person, but having viewed and ridden on Daylight painted cars I would say the red is pretty good. We must remember different model manufactures over the years have used different color variations , KATO Union Pacific Armor Yellow comes to mind. Con Cor did cars painted in the Golden State Colors a few years back maybe more than a few, I thought their red was a bit bright, as I recall Con Cor said they used Scale Coat paint for many years. Remember out there in the real world , cars got/get dirty, paint fades. the red color sun faded fairly quickly,this led to Stainless steel cars with red , scarlet letter boards and smooth sided cars with aluminum/gray paint with red /scarlet letter boards. A complete train in the original GS Scheme probably had some fresh looking cars and some faded and some light weathering out on the road. Cars were run through car washers at their home terminals,but these also tended to cause paint fade. The "Painting and Lettering Guide" published by the S P H & T S is somewhat useful. Color photos in books and magazines can very. As modelers we must decide for ourselves, what we think looks correct/right/OK to us.                         Nate Goodman (Nato). 

[nickelplate759]

I find the Intermountain/Centralia color on their Golden State cars to be a little heavy on the pink side, but not unacceptably so.  It should be Daylight Red (or NH Socony Red - pretty much the same thing), and is pinker than it looks in photos.  Also, they paint the car ends red when they should be silver.   Surprisingly, Con-Cor got that part (but very little else) right on their cars.

[randgust]

My summer 1972 trip on Amtrak on the short-lived "Chief" was a rainbow consist, most noticeably in the UP diner.   I've already got a Budd diner, but I've always wanted a better one to stand-in for the rainbow consist.   I got a Con-Cor one a while back, it was so bad there was just no saving it.  Its naturally bad to begin with but the previous owner did something to the paint and it was orangepeeled on one side.

So you guys just got me to put a reservation in on the next release of the IM one in UP, we'll see if that is as good as it sounds.

I did get extraordinarily lucky on Ebay a couple years ago and bought a slide of the exact equipment consist I was on (headed eastbound before I rode it westbound Chicago-Pasadena) parked at the Lamy station; I'd recorded car numbers out of the vestibules even as a 15-year old but had no train photos, that IM 'eastern' car is pretty darn close to the UP diner and the detail looks great.

[AlbertSpor]

Thanks for the replies. The reason I asked was I think that the "scarlet" on the general service painted sleepers, that I have is a little on the pink side. In comparing photos of the painted cars on Fred Kleins passenger train web site, the custom painted Golden State cars are definately a little bit darker shade of red, than the IMRC/CCS cars. Also the Shasta Daylight coaches I have seem a little off as well, somewhat darker red, and brownish orange, but not too bad compared with the Kato cars.  So I was just curious what others thought of the colors. If you guys would not mind, how does the CCS Golden State red compare with the Kato Daylight red, if you have those cars. I realize  the differences from different paint times and computer moniters, can affect things.
Again Thanks.
Albert

[nickelplate759]

Thanks for the replies. The reason I asked was I think that the "scarlet" on the general service painted sleepers, that I have is a little on the pink side. In comparing photos of the painted cars on Fred Kleins passenger train web site, the custom painted Golden State cars are definately a little bit darker shade of red, than the IMRC/CCS cars. Also the Shasta Daylight coaches I have seem a little off as well, somewhat darker red, and brownish orange, but not too bad compared with the Kato cars.  So I was just curious what others thought of the colors. If you guys would not mind, how does the CCS Golden State red compare with the Kato Daylight red, if you have those cars. I realize  the differences from different paint times and computer moniters, can affect things.
Again Thanks.
Albert

the CCS Golden State red is noticeably pinker than Kato's Daylight red - or any other Daylight/Golden-State red I have (Poly Scale, Tru-Color, Model-Flex, Con-Cor).

[GhengisKong]

I find the Intermountain/Centralia color on their Golden State cars to be a little heavy on the pink side, but not unacceptably so.  It should be Daylight Red (or NH Socony Red - pretty much the same thing), and is pinker than it looks in photos.  Also, they paint the car ends red when they should be silver.   Surprisingly, Con-Cor got that part (but very little else) right on their cars.

That doesn't sound too bad, at all. Plus it helps add "fading" realism to it for cars that were painted earlier than some later ones or haven't been repainted yet.