Anybody gotten a PWRS PS5077 yet?

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Well I FINALLY received my car after a call to PWRS. The car isn't bad. Doors are separate parts as are the tack boards. The small tack board was glued askew on each door, but not too noticeable. Paint is good and opaque. It appears to be better constructed than their cylindrical hoppers which I also received.

If these were available locally or through MBK, I'd pick up a few more. But... nah, not worth dealing with PWRS to get more.

[BCR 570]

there's no ACI label

ACI labels are very expensive to print on the cars as in most cases it adds three additional colours to the printing process, and therefore increases the cost not insignificantly.  I am assisting with the 5092 project and it was decided to leave them off due to the increased cost and the fact that decals to add them are available, which is what I will do.

Tim

[peteski]

ACI labels are very expensive to print on the cars as in most cases it adds three additional colours to the printing process, and therefore increases the cost not insignificantly.  I am assisting with the 5092 project and it was decided to leave them off due to the increased cost and the fact that decals to add them are available, which is what I will do.

Tim

The multi color decoration is becoming less of a problem when companies use ink jet printing to decorate the models. Unlike Tampo printing where each color is a separate printing step, ink jet prints all the colors in a singe operation.

MTL is one such company that seems to be using the ink jet printing process almost exclusively. They still Tampo print very small lettering (like dimensional data or the car ends), and certain other small details.

I have also seen examples of Tampo printed ACI labels where they only use few colors for the stripes (not an exact replica of the real label), but close enough to represent the ACI label on the model.  Those require fewer Tampo printing steps than a true representation of the ACI label.

[BCR 570]

I recently purchased two cars - a St. Lawrence Railroad car (as I have a photo of one in Chetwynd in 1977), and a Railbox car as I remember seeing them on the railway on occasion.  Overall they are very nice cars.  Unfortunately the factory opted to reduce the weight, and also opted to glue the roofs in place making it difficult to add weight.

I was able to pry off the roofs and add two 1/4 oz weights.  There are also some sprue nubs here and there which I will have to file away.  These will make interesting occasional visitors to my layout.  My Railbox car had a structural defect on the side facing into the nest which I could not remedy, but the model was quickly replaced without question.

For those who havent seen the cars in person, here are a few photos:








Tim

[nkalanaga]

Another issue with including an ACI label is that they were only used for about 10 years, roughly through the 70s. 

Cars painted before 1969(?) had them added later, so models of those as-painted shouldn't have them.

All cars through most of the 1970s were required to have them for interchange.

Many roads removed them after they were no longer required, so those cars that did have them in the 70s, as-built or repainted, on model railroads set in the 1980s or later, also wouldn't have them.

I model 1974, so all of my cars have them, but that puts me in the minority.  If you want to add them, Highball Graphics makes some very nice ones in N and HO, for a lot less per-car than buying MicroScale data sets.
https://highballgraphics.com/index.php/results/no-category/aci-labels