What's a decoder doing in a box car?

[Paradise275]

Atlas announced this. My question is what's with a decoder equipped box car (and cheaper than the standard equipped box car)?

(Click thumbnail to enlarge)

From 1975 to 1980 National Steel Car built over one-thousand 50’6” single-plug door box cars. Most of the 100-ton cars went to Canadian railroads primarily for paper service. Two hundred 70-ton cars went into food service for the Grand Trunk Western. the models have a number of variations corresponding to the prototype.

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Standard MSRP:
$22.95
Decoder-Equipped MSRP: $18.95

Estimated Delivery:
3rd Quarter 2015

Features:
 

[victor miranda]

you have to uninstall it for the car to work?

gotta be a mistake of some sort.

[CrazyLynx]

They obviously meant "Undecorated MSRP" but someone grabbed the wrong product template when creating the announcement.

[BruceStikkers]

I saw something recently of a decoder that makes rail/train noise; maybe that is what they are doing. They could have the click/clack of jointed rail or something.

Bruce Stikkers

[Chulvis]

Definitely an error. The 2015 print catalog list it as an undecorated car and not decoder equipped. 

[C855B]

I saw something recently of a decoder that makes rail/train noise; maybe that is what they are doing. They could have the click/clack of jointed rail or something.

Not for nineteen bucks. It's a typo.

[victor miranda]

for 19 bucks ...
a sense of humor costs more, I agree.

it is hard for it not to be a mistake.
that much is obvious.

the joking on the subject... clearly isn't obvious.

was you ever bit by a dead bee?

[nkalanaga]

Maybe that's the new load.  Take the defective decoders, put them on a pallet, and use them as a piece of strange-looking freight.

Of course, that wouldn't work here, because the doors don't open, and no one could see it...

I did see an ad quite a while back for a decoder-equipped HO boxcar, with a remote-controlled coupler, but couldn't see the point.  The only way to use it was to uncouple something from that one car, and at the price quoted very few could afford to quip the entire train.  Locomotive, maybe, but even that would be of limited use.

[tom mann]

reminds me of this old Lionel product:

[MVW]

was you ever bit by a dead bee?

Ah, Walter Brennan. Was that character in the novel, or just added for the screenplay?

Jim

[victor miranda]

I only ever saw the movie.

Bacall was hot.

[nkalanaga]

Tom:  Did you ever see this page:
http://hawkerpb.tripod.com/box/

An actual, prototype, "self-propelled boxcar".

One of the pictures from the site:

[Mark5]

Ah, Walter Brennan. Was that character in the novel, or just added for the screenplay?

Jim

The movie is very loosely based on the novel, so I'd think that Eddie is not in the book.