The Intermountain/Centraillia Modernized Santa Fe Cabooses are finally here and well worth the wait. I'am sure everyone knows we have had a long history of Santa Fe Steel Cabooses in N Gauge (Scale),beginning with the very crude Arnold Rapido car,red with silver roof, large oversize end rails with no ladders,tinplate trucks with metal couplers. Then an upgrade to later style trucks with early Rapido Couplers, finally the upgraded Revell Rapido version with nicer platform railings with ladders, and carrying through with cars from AHM, Trix (Aurora),and Atlas now Atlas Trainman. Now finally we have a Santa Fe Steel Caboose we can be proud of. IM wasn't the first company to offer the modern A.T.S.F. paint scheme,that was Bachmann with their un modernized GT style steel car complete with yellow coupla found on branch line cars,but the Intermountain car wins hands down. I heve recieved two of the IM cars ,one with Block Lettering and one with Roman Lettering and a safety slogan.The body work on the IM car is supurb,fine rivet detail,modernized windows with aluminum painted frames,plated over side windows where changes were made on the prototype cars. Nice etched metal roof walks,the flate plate radio antenna on coupla tops with fine handrails surrounding,wonderful small platform rails and ladders to the roof. Amazing free standing small grab irons on either side of the end doors.The block lettered cars as per prototype has a red underbody ,red tool box and airtanks on one side, the ends of the railings, every other ladder step, curved side grabs coupla railings and step edges are painted white, and yes the small grabs next to the end doors.There is a red smoke jack. The Roman lettered car again as per prototype features black underbody and tanks etc. black smoke jack, white railing ends,side and small end grabs, top part of ladders,white step edges. Both cars come with caboose trucks,body mounted extended couplers representing the cushoned draft gear these cars recieved after rebuilding. The cars are really tightly packed in the plastic case (they don't want ya to remove them),the clear plastic lining halves found in the UP Caboose boxes have been inproved, now both halves snap fit together.These are the finest models of the iconic Santa Fe Caboose I have seen in N Scale.One interesting scheme which I did not get is a one car Christmas scheme that the railroad did in black and red on a white car body. Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.
