How do you like the Des Plaines Hobbies Gunderson Husky Stack Cars?

These are beautiful but fragile cars. It is very easy to knock off the eight posts that sit at the four corners of the cars if one is not careful. The original containers that had to be painted and decaled are a very tight fit in the cars. Removing them tends to lift the plastic walkways on the sides unless one holds the walkways down. The newer, pre-painted containers are nicer looking and less wide; but they are slightly longer. The slightly greater length means that their ends contact high-rail wheel flanges when the cars are on curves. Scale wheels may not have that issue, but I only have high-rail wheels. I've gotten around the problem by placing a few narrow wooden coffee stirrers on the bottom of the car to lift the container just enough to avoid wheel contact with the container in the well.

 

Only the 48-ft containers fit in the well. The available 53-ft containers would have to sit on top of the shorter version if one wants to use them with these cars. That is not clear on the website when it states that the 53-foot versions are suitable for these cars. I don't attach two containers for double-stacks. They fit well enough on top of each other although the cars do wobble a bit. I seldom use double stacks anyway because, like older roads in the East, I didn't anticipated the 21st century well enough; and my tunnels are too small. 

I was just looking at these in Des Plains hobbies as few house ago.  I pass it (more or less) on a frequent trip to Wisconsin. The cars look good, and I was thinking about a few of them after the recent rant (see cancellation of 57' reefer) for more modern rolling stock.  Anyone have pictures to post of these stack cars? 

I did pick up a few more steel PFE reefers for my UP challengers and mikado.  Really nice cars BTW. 

Des Plains has some nice stuff, wish their website was A LOT better. 

Ben

I had 4, sold 3.  I wasn't happy with the way they sit on the track...very wobbly.
Very true that the end railings snap off easily.
Nice idea but not for me.

"Nice idea but not for me"

 

    To me the big problem with stack trains is they need to be long to look right so require a huge room for a suitable layout.  I guess one could model just a ramp with loading or unloading instead of running the trains but still would require a lot of stack cars and trailers . I think this kind of railroading works better in HO or especially N scale where long trains don't take up as much space and cost per car is a lot less. Things like the cancelled PFE mechanical reefer make a lot more sense to me as they can be used to model an S scale branch line or industrial district in a fairly small room and still look right doing it.....DaveB

Good looking cars....from here!

I have at least 8 of them and like them! They run will on S-Helper 29" radius track. The only issue I have is that there is very little clearance for the trucks to rotate when the container is in the well.  That is the main reason why the cars need such a large minimum radius. I made small wire pins so the second container will not slide off the lower container when I run them.