what doyano about passenger cars from these folks. Are they typically 18 or 21 inch. Are they any good. Don’t have any now, however, I saw some on a “on line” auction house at a pretty good price for a set of 6 Santa Fe super chief streamliners.
Please advise. I 32 feet with 72” diameter curves.
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Layout is approx 16x32’ with 72” curves
Excellent products.
The sunset GGD cars are scale length for whatever prototype they represent. 18 inch or 21 inch does not quite describe it. An 80 ft car - common - would be 80 times 1/4 inch or 20 inches BETWEEN THE VESTIBULES. Prototype cars are measured inside the vestibules. So if they are 80 ft cars, probably lenght over couplers would be around 21 inches.
The GGD coaches such as the PRR P70 heavyweight, are 70 ft between vestibule or 17.5 inches so they would probably be a little longer than 18 inches including vestibule and coupler.
As for operation, the ones I have are 2 rail. They easily go around 48 inch radius. These are the heavyweight coaches, headend, and pullman cars. The detail underneath is pretty sparse and the trucks swing pretty wide. You could check the website for Sunset/GGD or ask Sunset about what the 3 rail ones will do. Since they have talgo style couplers I would guess they will probably handle 36 inch radius, but that is just a guess.
Would the wheel flanges be scale? What code height? This could make a performance difference depending on your track type.
The wheel flanges on the 2-rail cars are NMRA recommended height and profile. They will work on Code 125 rail and probably smaller.
I don't know about the 3-rail ones, but I saw a set and they looked pretty big to me, I guess like Lionel or MTH.
I have some GGD cars in 2-rail and in 3-rail. The 3-rail flanges are larger, but they are not the pizza-cutters of other manufacturers.
The plastic PRR cars (all are) run fine on O72; I mount KD couplers on swing arms.
The lightweight, 85-ft cars, with couplers on swing arms, will negotiate, barely, O72. Unfortunately, there are a couple of curves, badly laid, kinks at the joints, that put my lightweight cars on the ground. So, for now, these cars are shelf queens.
The best in the business. Only Atlas O comes close with their Zephyr cars. Expensive? You get what you pay for. Try to find a Congressional set or Powhatan Arrow. Good luck.
Gotta be high rail???
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