Con-Cor passenger cars kits?

[sirenwerks]

I was in one of the local small town LHS's today and, as I was being pulled out by my traveling partner, I swear I spied Con-Cor passenger car kits in cardboard boxes in N scale.  This was post-lunch libations so my vision may have been out of whack, but I'd never seen such a thing before so I am left wondering if it was some sort of ruse, like the man eating chicken, or was it real?

[peteski]

Could those have been simply undecorated cars?  I assume that they were undecorated.

Even if they weren't assembled (again assuming that these were standard Con-Cor smooth side cars), they would have consisted of a clear roof and windows "glass", sides and the floor, metal underframe, trucks, and truck pins. Not much of a kit...

[nickelplate759]

Yes, they did sell kits - I have a few.  They were actually the Rowa passenger cars unassembled. Pretty nice cars, but the Con-Cor paint jobs were a little hit or miss.

[Frisco Larry]

They also sold Seksui 60' heavyweight Japanese passenger cars painted in US roads in unassembled (kit) form and these came in the old Concor cardboard boxes.

[nkalanaga]

And the original smoothsides came as undecorated "kits", meaning mostly that the roof and underframe weren't pushed all the way in, making it easy to paint the car without having to pry it apart first.  As Peteski said, there wasn't much to the cars, and the truck pins were already in the trucks on the ones I remember.  CC used an odd split pin that snapped into the underframe, rather than a friction fit pin like most companies.

For all of their shortcomings, the original four cars were nicely done for the time, and, at least for me, were very useful.  They were GN prototypes, so fit my needs perfectly!  The later diner and Pullman had "issues", mainly that they were mirror images of the prototypes, as someone apparently read the drawings backwards.  I don't know how, especially on the diner, as one look at a prototype picture would have made it obvious!  The Pullman wasn't so noticeable, but having the kitchen windows at the wrong end of the car stuck out...

[Bob Bufkin]

The old mirrow image.  Haven't heard that subject in a long time.

[sirenwerks]

These were painted for Erie-Lackawanna.  I'm aware of the mirror image issue.  Given their price, I was looking at them more for use with brass sides to get my Empire Builder together.

[nkalanaga]

If the sides you have fit them, they make good models.  Many of the newer sides, at least from Brass Car Sides, are designed for the core kits from American Limited(?), and are a little too long for  the CC bodies. 

For those who haven't tried brass sides, the CC cars have one advantage, besides a good price for the old ones, in that they are already square and solid, with good weight.  The core kits allow you to have better detailed underframes, but also need a lot more work.  I've used both, and if you're leaving the skirts on the sides, the CC cars work very nicely.