Aluminum Passenger Cars

Costs less to make plastic.  You can still buy all the aluminum you want on the used market.

I agree. They were the best in my opinion. 

There was a lot of discussion about this when Lionel announced the end of aluminum car production (aluminum was only used on streamlined passenger cars - heavyweights were plastic, as are Golden Gate Depot's heavyweights). Cost was a driving factor, but I think it was also mentioned that it was easier to add detailing and individual variations. MTH has not produced any aluminum cars except for a couple years at its very beginning in the 90s (made by Samhonsa).

For unpainted passenger cars like Santa Fe, etc., aluminum finishes can't be beat, IMHO.

bob2 posted:

Costs less to make plastic.  You can still buy all the aluminum you want on the used market.

Problem with plastic is most tooling is fixed, using an aluminum extrusion you can add or move windows/doors fairly easily. Many have mentioned here the Lionel 21" ribbed cars are essentially patterned after the NYC Empire State Express cars and that basic design stays with all future runs.

Aluminum, while able to be made in lower numbers is still more expensive than plastic tooling.  More labor to assemble them, the requirement that the details be cast separately, and the higher cost of materials tend to put new Aluminum cars out of the reach of most these days. 

Even K-Line's excellent offerings would cost in the $200-$250 plus range each these days for generic cars.

However, I agree that plastic tooling is limiting.  You are stuck with the tool on a fluted car and while many may not care, Budd, ACF and Pullman Standard all had different styles of fluting even within their own offerings.  Budd fluting varied over the years especially. On the plus side a plastic model offers a much higher level of detail out of the box that can be built into the tool.  Atlas has shown that with the quality of their passenger car offerings.

When a company invests in a plastic tool they need to use that tool a lot to simply cover the cost of the tool.  At least today with slide tooling, windows are easier to modify.

Personally I think plastic makes for a much more realistic model. My plastic cars from GGD, Lionel, and Atlas are far superior to my expensive GGD aluminum cars. To be honest, I was very disappointed with the level of detail on the two aluminum GGD cars I own. Scale plastic cars are around $150 a piece while aluminum are nearly $300.