About twelve years ago, MTH offered a Premier black PRR
tank car with red keystone and gold lettering. The 'pipe railing'
along the widest part of the tank was quite flimsy. Weaver
had one a year later with a thinner railing. Most ice hatches
details are small and Lionel milk car doors are a work of art.
What cars on your layout would you rather not have visitors
touch?
John
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1) The hatches and the latches on the roof of detailed, scale PFE reefers. also the latches on the main doors along the side.
2) Anything pertaining to my MTH European series 241.A
The Atlas reefers are pretty delicate.
The unloading ramp details on the WEAVER and LIONEL TOFC flatcars can be easily damaged.
I certainly like the extra detail on my engines and rolling stock, but when it gets to the point that I can't pick one up without breaking something I feel they've crossed the line.
If they're going to make finely detail cars, I'd rather see them non-operating (hatches that open, doors, etc), in other words...it doesn't have to work to look pretty.
I recently stripped paint from 3 PS1 boxcars (1 MTH, 2 Weaver) and the stirrups on the Weaver cars are thinner than what's on the MTH car. None broke off, but the pieces at both ends (that help keep the roofwalk in place) snapped off easily (when I was scrubbing). On the MTH car these pieces are thicker and none of them broke off.
Whenever I snap a stirrup off I replace them all with wire or brass detail parts. Most of my Atlas cars have wire details, but some don't not sure if MTH and Lionel use wire or not on some of their cars.
I think the Lionel Genset, it has too many delicate parts, including some of the railings. I agree with Keith, the K-Line milk car is pretty delicate as well. In addition, I keep the screws out of it so I can turn cans back upright when they fall down inside of it.
These were a catch 22 for me. I got them (along with the log & coal cars) specifically for my kids to play with. They're great in some respects... work well, and work with the remote (much easier, & more fun than parking on a UCS track & lining it up perfectly). The flip side is what Keith noted... they're relatively scale, detailed cars. I asked them to be careful with them & it hasn't been too bad so far... although I did have one of the ballast dump car doors (sides) get broken off.
I'll join the chorus on woodside reefers, especially Atlas. The MTH can also be pretty fragile, especially the stirrups. The MTH is made worse by the fact that parts are all but unobtainable.
Some early K-Line reefers were made from the same parts as Intermountain kits. These things are super fragile - I don't even like to handle them myself, and I will never buy another one. I think the only one I still have is the Pig's Eye beer reefer - for a really cool beer car I'll put up with the fragility. You can usually get stirrups, grab irons, reefer latches, etc. from Atlas, but not MTH.
MTH Euro tank cars are surprisingly delicate. One of mine came out of the box with a couple of things broken. I sent it back to MTH for repairs, and they managed to break a couple more details putting it back in the box. These I can and will fix myself.
For locomotives, the 3rd Rail Cab Forwards are the kings of fragile. Look at one of those things and a part falls off. I had to reattach a cylinder exhaust pipe on one of mine that came off in shipping - on the way back from another repair at 3rd Rail! It had been properly packed in the original box.
Some of the newer MTH electrics also have fragile details. The Milwaukee Road boxcabs require special handling, and the Traxx unit has a lot of little doodads on the roof. I had to glue a couple of them back on right out of the box.
Most of my Atlas cars have parts so delicate that I broke some off just getting them out of the box! But that won't keep me from buying them....I love the added detail and I paid for that. I just have to be super careful when handling them. I have also found that many of my MTH Twin Stack cars have parts that are easily broken off. But I just glue them back on and keep on runnin' em!
These were a catch 22 for me. I got them (along with the log & coal cars) specifically for my kids to play with. They're great in some respects... work well, and work with the remote (much easier, & more fun than parking on a UCS track & lining it up perfectly). The flip side is what Keith noted... they're relatively scale, detailed cars. I asked them to be careful with them & it hasn't been too bad so far... although I did have one of the ballast dump car doors (sides) get broken off.
I equipped a Lionel Milk Car with TMCC do I don't have to line it up so carefully. As long as I have the door lined up with the platform, I'm good to go.
The undercarriage piping and detail is easy to damage on premium rolling stock from various manufacturers. Definitely a 180 from 6464's. It is common for the unaware to grab a car and break those delicate udnercarriage details.
Stack
The top railings on the Atlas 33K tank cars, and the underframe details on the Atlas autoracks seem to be particularly flimsy, but the worst is probably the crank assemblies on the sides of the gunderson sets.
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