From my understanding the rolling stock that Menards produces is semi scale, about the same size as traditional Lionel rolling stock. Does anyone know if Menards will ever produce scale size rolling stock? I like the low cost of the Menards train cars, and the quality seems to be very good for the selling price but I can't use this semi scale size on my layout since these cars are too small.
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Everything I have seen from Menards appears to be "traditional Size" which is generally smaller than full scale.
Lionel bought the dies for the old Weaver Line of Scale cars taht were made in the USA and which are full size scale, and less detailed than Atlas O or some of the MTH Premier. That might be a lower cost option for you. I don't know how they are priced. they call them "Lion Scale" I think.
It's been said that their boxcars closely match the dimensions of Pennsylvania RR class x-29 boxcars, but the prototypes were smaller than the typical boxcar one thinks of when someome talks about a scale 40' boxcar. The tooling is most likely cloned or shared, and when originally created was likely not intended to be a scale model.
The ore cars are said to match the Lionel models, which are narrower than the typical 10' width expected of a scale freight car. I've heard or read somewhere that they represent a lower-capacity prototype, but I have no confirmation of that.
The 14" flatcars are closest to a "scale" model in overall dimensions, but are probably not modeled after a specific real-life flatcar (and they're missing details such as a brakewheel)
The tank cars are similarly not known to match any specific real-life tankers detail-wise, but prototype tank cars came in such a wide variety of sizes that I'd not be surprised to find that there are real single-dome, triple dome and/or frameless tank cars that match their models dimension-wise.
Best to consider them all "traditional"-sized, as you'd need pretty detailed knowledge of real-life rolling stock to know if any of them come close.
---PCJ
I have 2 Menards flat cars, both have diecast trucks and appear to be scale sized. That said, I have seen Menards cars in the store and the ones with plastic trucks are definitely semi scale.
That's a 1/48 model of a Patton tank, nearly 12 feet wide for comparison. 
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