K-line 21" passenger car question

If you search "K Line 21" passenger tooling" on this forum you will get a couple of recent threads that discuss this very topic, one as recently as July. The answer (from someone in a position to know) seems to be no, Lionel did not get the tooling. One explanation is as follows:

The K-line tooling for the passenger cars was owned by the factory and went to Kader when they purchased the factory.  Rumor had it that Atlas bought the tooling, but I can't confirm that.  Also for some perspective, these cars would run over $200 each retail today due to inflation in Asia so when they were originally released they truly were a bargain for the quality of the car.

I agree with the last comment. The aftermarket (eBay etc) for these cars is very active so you might have thought that someone would be thinking of putting these cars back into production, this time with LED lighting. Most likely it won't be Lionel.

Still, some of Lionel's aluminum 21" cars bear a striking resemblance to K-Line cars.

Lionel only got the use of these molds for a short period of time. They did Milwaukee Road, Northern Pacific, and Texas Special cars form these molds. They may have been a few more, but not a lot.

I believe the parent company for Bachman owns the molds. I have said that future production is questionable from these molds because of the cost of production. I sure would like to see more made, especially the 21" Sante Fe hi-levels.

I have heard exactly the same as Passenger Train Collector regarding the status and future production.

Gerry

Lionel has the ability but apparently not the desire.

In my experience I had to give up too much operation realism when I ran them on my moderate to small 72" to 60" radius curves.  

The severe overhang of their scale length created a picture more of yard movements, not the mainline operation I desired to replicate.  A caricature along the line of boiler swing with a Big Boy on an average hi rail pike.

It seems that MTH and Lionel know what sells & looks good by not stepping up to the 20/21 inch lengths.   It would seem reasonable, if 21" looked good and had potentially strong sales numbers MTH and Lionel would be tripping over each other getting them to market. 

I find it best when I use equipmemnt and scale commensurate with the space I have available.  It's all in the eye of the beholder.

I am so happy that I own the K-line cars that I do and even though my 21" cars are running on 072 minimum curves, I still enjoy them.  As Tom says above, it is in the eyes of the beholder....  I knew I would be running scale length cars on my layout and I knew I would have curves that visually would look strange but I planned accordingly and in most cases hid the outside viewing curves which look the worst with these length cars.  To be honest, in my eyes, a scale locomotive with a shorter than scale passenger car looks strange too.... so again, we all make our own compromises....in the eyes of the beholder!!

Alan

Well, that explains the similarity I was thinking of, which is of Lionel's Texas Special 21" cars with K Line's offerings. Pity Lionel did not make Union Pacific as well.

Alan I am with you about being very happy with my 21" K-Line passenger cars. These cars are not perfect and neither is the layout but I am happy and that is what counts. Mt collection is split about 50-50 between Lo and Hi level and are all 21" ATSF.

I am sure most if not all are aware that GGD makes a limited number of Long passenger cars on a reservation basis. They can be found at http://www.goldengatedepot.com/.

First, there are no "molds" involved since all those K-Line streamlined passenger cars were produced in extruded aluminum.

Second, the original tooling for those 21" extruded aluminum passenger cars is now used to produce the 21" passenger cars for Golden Gate Depot. Although the K-Line 21" passenger cars were really nice, especially for the price at the time, the current Golden Gate Depot passengers are MUCH more accurate, with correct window layouts/placements.

I did not know that GG was using the K-Line extrusions, but otherwise agree with Hot.  An extrusion comes out in a very long piece, and is then chopped to length.  If Lionel has the short models, then it has the ability to make longer ones if it chooses.

The GG models are indeed better.  They should be - they are second generation, curing the flaws of the first. We probably will not get a third generation.

I stocked up on K-Line, and have very little room for the GG.  I would eBay them and start over, but all are 2-railed on longer trucks, and that market is limited.

By the way, Tom, when did you graduate to 3- rail curves?

Even though the K-Line 21" cars are very hot on the market right now, they are still the best lower-cost alternative to GGD cars if one is willing to sacrifice some accuracy. I too am in the camp of those that love the K-Line cars even on O-72 curves, because there's simply no beating them on the straightaways.

I definitely agree! I have the K-Line 21" NYC Empire State Express cars, and when running on our big modular layout (Independent Hi-Railers, Midwest Division), they look fantastic and get LOTS of favorable comments. The only other 21" streamlined passenger set I have is the GGD Southern Pacific Daylight set, since I tend to prefer the GGD 21" heavyweight cars.

Concerning scale length passenger equipment for the Union Pacific, Scott Mann is still "looking into" how to produce ACCURATE models of their passenger cars. However, the UP equipment was generally manufactured by a different car-builder, and the rivet detail will be be a big hurdle for GGD to overcome.

The K-line passenger cars are nice buy my vote is for the latest state of the art passenger cars are the CZ cars produced by Atlas. The 200.00 dollar car cost is just a bunch of speculation. The only additional cost are the paint mask, most all of the tooling is the same.

Atlas produces these cars and they can be found for as low as 140.00 a piece.
The only downside is you just have to wait for the next car.... and wait... and wait..

Thanks for the clarification Hot Water. I am also in the camp that loves K-Line 21" cars. In terms of demand, just look at the prices that are achieved in the secondary market for these cars. There appears to be no shortage of buyers for them.

In particular, why someone hasn't done the SF hi-level cars amazes me. The secondary prices they are bringing is astronomical.

I was fortunate enough to get a seven car, Milwaukee Road set of the 21" cars from K-Line when they made them.  But I just couldn't stand the errors that K-Line made, especially on the interiors.  The most glaring errors were on the one-of-a-kind, Skytop observation car.  Maury, in his typical stubborn fashion, insisted on installing pullman sleeper interiors.  The cars were actually pretty good replicas of the Skytop Parlor cars, a completely different car design than the sleepers were.  The K-Line cars had the window and trim detail correct for the parlor but Maury insisted on installing roomettes and bedrooms inside.  I completly rebuilt the interior in my car and looks ever so much better and correct, too.

Similarly, on the Super Dome car, K-Line had half the seats facing one direction and the other half facing the other.  Here, again, I rebuilt the interior so that all the seats face one direction.  I also got rid of the crummy ivory colored seats and repainted them with a kind of wine red.   On this particular car, I also changed out the trucks to use MTH, six wheel streamlined car trucks.  K-Line had installed 4 wheel trucks, I suppose because they didn't have any six wheel version. 

I also installed people, lots of them (my railroad makes money!) in all the passenger cars and added further undercar details to all the cars. 

I also picked up an eight car set of C&NW 21" cars which are fairly nice, too.  Yes, I know that K-Line has not done every car's window spacing and detail but I haven't changed that on my cars.  They are very pretty, though.

All of my other 21" streamlined cars are from Weaver.  And these are replicas of the pre-war Hiawatha cars;  A set of seven of the 1934, smooth side cars, and a set of ten of the 1939 seven rib-sided cars.   I'm in the process of installing interiors to the 1939 rib-side cars, which were made before detailed interiors became the standard on 3-rail trains.  Should be done with that project some time next spring.

Most of the curves on my layout are at least 72" diameter, although in a hidden area I was forced to cut the diameter down to about 64".  While the train looks a bit silly rounding those two tight curves, at least you can't see them from the main layout room and the cars negotiate the curves well.

I do also have some 18" streamlined cars, but when you see them with the 21" cars they don't look correct. 

Paul Fischer

While I was mostly interested in getting one car from the several western roadnames

K-Line offered, and there WERE a number of different roads, not just two eastern roads,

and THAT makes them unusual and desireable .(I was working on it, but didn't get them

all when K-Line went "poof")     K-Line there, as with rheir Heavyweights, and the

Williams USRA locos, certainly blew a fresh breeze through this hobby.