Question about MDC/Roundhouse PS Waffle Side Box Car

[nkalanaga]

As far as I know most of the MDC cars have prototypes.  The FMC boxes in particular looked quite good compared with the new ones that went through Pasco.  Some of them may be obscure prototypes, but they did exist.

[chessie system fan]

For me, it's not so much knowing how to search but having an encyclopedic knowledge of everything.     I think I originally stumbled across the prototype by going through every L&N freight car image on fallen flags and rr picture archives years ago.

[nkalanaga]

Still off-topic, but Athearn uses the MDC floor casting in their PS-1 boxcars.  I just received one of the new Missouri-Illinois cars and the floor is the old MDC "2" casting, right down to the casting gate marks and the "2" cast into it.  The only change is that they use screws instead of truck pins, and the floor is now painted shiny black.

So bringing back the MDC boxcars would be very simple. 

[jagged ben]

Off topic, but I wish Athearn would bring the MDC cars back.  Atlas is doing quite well with their Trainman line, so there is a market for less-than-superdetailed models, and the boxcars especially aren't available from anyone else.  They already have modern trucks with truck-mounted McHenry couplers, so they wouldn't even have to modify the floors.

Maybe I'm wrong about a few of these, but I believe that Athearn has done runs of more than 10 different MDC products.  That includes the 'Berwick' boxcar, 4 different FMC boxcars, 4 reefers, an improved version of the Husky-Stack, and I think a couple of the gondolas?

Maybe I'm misreading what you have in mind, but give them some credit for what they've done up to this point. 

[nkalanaga]

If they have done them, great, and I will thank them for it, with an apology for misleading people about their unavailability.  I hadn't seen them advertized, and none of them made it to my "local" hobby shop, so I just assumed they weren't rerunning them. 

[Robbman]

Tne 50' PS-1 is also a former MDC car... the last model they did.

[nkalanaga]

Thank you!  I just received one of Athearn's new MI PS-1s, but never saw an MDC version of it.  That likely explains why the floor looks so much like the old MDC casting.

Oddly, the 50 ft car with the wide door is one version MT apparently hasn't done.  I made a few years ago by installing their "Railbox" doors on narrow-door cars, then extending the door tracks.