MTH latest release of Twin stack sets.....anyone got them yet?

I have a pre-order in with MrMuffin's. Haven't heard any announcements yet regarding their receiving any, (and the link on my pre-order list to the entry on their site generated a 'not found' message)  but there are supposed to be one or two more shipments of items headed their way.

---PCJ

@RailRide posted:

I have a pre-order in with MrMuffin's. Haven't heard any announcements yet regarding their receiving any, (and the link on my pre-order list to the entry on their site generated a 'not found' message)  but there are supposed to be one or two more shipments of items headed their way.

---PCJ

Same here

@jini5 posted:

These are selling out super fast. My preorder is on its way, but would like to know your thoughts on these sets and maybe some pics as well.   Thanks

Should be same as years past...

they are a fine set of the older style intermodal equipment

@MikeH posted:

Same here

Spoke too soon My invoice arrived yesterday, just paid it a couple of minutes ago.

Not sure if I can clear my test track in time to photograph them upon arrival...(there's a backlogged process related to my collection inventory-ing procedure)

---PCJ

Do the TTX cars (ones with the CSX containers) have the 224 FRA striping?

@Lehigh Valley Railroad posted:

Do the TTX cars (ones with the CSX containers) have the 224 FRA striping?

Got all I had preordered from CT trains yesterday. Sorry, not sure what 224 FRA striping. If you let me know what that is I can look for you. I have them on my temporary layout.

@jini5 posted:

Got all I had preordered from CT trains yesterday. Sorry, not sure what 224 FRA striping. If you let me know what that is I can look for you. I have them on my temporary layout.

The yellow reflective striping (MTH just would use a different color yellow) on the sides of the cars

Do they accept anybody's scale size container ?

I got mine today.  Lot of small loose and broken parts on the fine detail of the A and B units.  Most of the hand rail posts on the ends are bent as well.  Haven't looked at the CDE units just yet.  I'll try to post pics shortly.

Anthony

@Lehigh Valley Railroad posted:

Do the TTX cars (ones with the CSX containers) have the 224 FRA striping?

I don't see the striping on mine.

@clem k posted:

Do they accept anybody's scale size container ?

They accept Atlas 40' containers just fine.

@A. Wells posted:

They accept Atlas 40' containers just fine.

They sure do. They are a tad loose with a MTH 40 or pair of 20’s on the bottom, though

Here are a few pics I just took of the set I received today and a couple of items of note.  (I'll post pics of the detail damage along with several rants in the next post.)

* The CSX containers that come with the set appear to be the CSX blue but their mat surface finish makes them appear drab when placed next to Atlas containers.  Interestingly enough, the Jinzo 53' CSX Atlas container that I have takes on a purple hue when placed next to these MTH CSX containers.  The doors on the MTH CSX containers do not open.  However, the detail on the non door end and the detail of the rivots is very good.  The pegs however are rather large compared to the Atlas containers.  They cause the CSX containers to ride high when placed a top the Atlas containers.

* The detail on the husky cars is very good but also very delicate.  There are many broken, bent or loose pieces on the end units.  For the most part, the swinging guides work well.  There was only two that I found that did not swing all the way end to accommodate 40' containers on top.

* The articulation attachment between cars is excellent...much,  much better than the Atlas attachment method.  Each spine top swivels out of the way to add the coupling and then is swung back over top of the coupling to prevent it from coming out.

* The printing is very crisp...even the smallest lettering could be read.  There is no highlight striping on the cars though.  Also, the walks appear to be plastic as well.  The only parts that appear to be metal are the trucks.

* The unit, when fully assembled, is just shy of 6 feet in length...it appears to be about 66 inches.  I would not attempt to run this on less than 54in track as the space between the cars is only about 0.5in and the middle cars do not have extra angle movement in the articulation joints.

* Some of the cars had issues where the top container could not fully mate with the bottom container due to molding issues around the walls.  I only found this in one case.

* There appears to be a lot of frictional drag in the trucks, esp. when the well cars are loaded.  I would recommend slow start speed profiles regardless and multiple engine lash-ups if 2 or more of these sets are present on a consist.

Overall they it is a nice set for an Intermodal themed layout...possibly not a modern Intermodal themed layout as I have not seen the units on any consist within the last 3 years in this area.

Anthony

Now for the bad!

For shame MTH; for shame.  There are broken, bent and loose pieces on the ends units.  It is clear to me that the packaging and the packaging method is to blame.  If yours is like mine, you better have some modeling glue handy and a steady hand and some free time.  For the price, MTH should have done much better in making sure these pieces were in pristine condition when they arrived at their destination (aka. my house).  At least one bottom grill does not latch fully to the bottom of the unit.  It pressed with enough force, the bottom grills will come apart from the walls.

Not all detailed components fully mate with the unit either.  The hoses and such just ride up against the side wall (unless they are like mine and have come completely separated from the whole unit (I neglected to take a photo of my pile of pieces.)).

Luckily, should I get these pieces reattached, straightened and what not, I'll probably be the only person to know there was damage present to the cars.

Anthony

@A. Wells posted:

Here are a few pics I just took of the set I received today and a couple of items of note.  (I'll post pics of the detail damage along with several rants in the next post.)

* The CSX containers that come with the set appear to be the CSX blue but their mat surface finish makes them appear drab when placed next to Atlas containers.  Interestingly enough, the Jinzo 53' CSX Atlas container that I have takes on a purple hue when placed next to these MTH CSX containers.  The doors on the MTH CSX containers do not open.  However, the detail on the non door end and the detail of the rivots is very good.  The pegs however are rather large compared to the Atlas containers.  They cause the CSX containers to ride high when placed a top the Atlas containers.

* The detail on the husky cars is very good but also very delicate.  There are many broken, bent or loose pieces on the end units.  For the most part, the swinging guides work well.  There was only two that I found that did not swing all the way end to accommodate 40' containers on top.

* The articulation attachment between cars is excellent...much,  much better than the Atlas attachment method.  Each spine top swivels out of the way to add the coupling and then is swung back over top of the coupling to prevent it from coming out.

* The printing is very crisp...even the smallest lettering could be read.  There is no highlight striping on the cars though.  Also, the walks appear to be plastic as well.  The only parts that appear to be metal are the trucks.

* The unit, when fully assembled, is just shy of 6 feet in length...it appears to be about 66 inches.  I would not attempt to run this on less than 54in track as the space between the cars is only about 0.5in and the middle cars do not have extra angle movement in the articulation joints.

* Some of the cars had issues where the top container could not fully mate with the bottom container due to molding issues around the walls.  I only found this in one case.

* There appears to be a lot of frictional drag in the trucks, esp. when the well cars are loaded.  I would recommend slow start speed profiles regardless and multiple engine lash-ups if 2 or more of these sets are present on a consist.

Overall they it is a nice set for an Intermodal themed layout...possibly not a modern Intermodal themed layout as I have not seen the units on any consist within the last 3 years in this area.

Anthony

Anthony,

These are still used every day. They only can take 20/40’ international containers, so they are not as widely used if it’s a domestic shipper.

I only tried the MTH on the bottom and Atlas on top

Here is a few more pics from my temporary layout. I guess I was lucky this time. These showed up in flawless condition. A Wells.....sorry yours showed up with loose pieces. I have been there many times before. I know it is not fun. Not sure how I lucked out this time. I am generally happy with these( I better be, I waited long enough for them). Was not too sure about the color on the CSX containers at first but when all 5 cars are put together they look sweet. (in my opinion). Not an expert on CSX colors.

  One observation......look at the pic showing the new CSX/TTX well car versus the CSX well car with white Nedloyd container on top. That CSX  well car is from an earlier release. Do you see the difference in height between the two? Notice that the white Nedloyd container sits about 3/8" lower? This is because the (2) 20' containers on the bottom of this car have different height dimensions than the 40' or 48' MTH container. Wonder why that is the case. Maybe that is prototypical?

@jini5 - I noticed that height difference with the older 48' Hanjin containers as well.  I was too lazy to measure but I knew it was about 1/4" higher.  I have no idea why there is the size difference with older MTH containers but I do have the containers from my newer MTH 48' husky stacks to switch out with the CSX ones as desired.  (Shame the Lionel ones aren't scale length wise...I have a small army of those.)   I also have the CSX 5 car in a box somewhere with those Nedloyd containers.  I was too have two of the TTX instead of the one but I decided against having two.  Your CSX containers look much more blue than mine.  Maybe it's because you have decent lighting to take photos with For some reason, mine seem much darker than what I'm accustomed to.  Do you notice any drag when you're running them?  (Oddly enough they don't drag as bad as my recent B&O passenger car acquisitions but it's still noticeable.) Anthony

I like the look of the different height with these containers. Not all containers are equal on any train- some are hi-cubes, some standard, some 40’s, some 53’s, and yet some are 20’s. Mix them up to make it accurate for sure!

@Jeff78rr posted:

I like the look of the different height with these containers. Not all containers are equal on any train- some are hi-cubes, some standard, some 40’s, some 53’s, and yet some are 20’s. Mix them up to make it accurate for sure!

I was just responding that the answer to the different heights is staring me right in the face.  They're hi-cube.  I didn't think CSX had hi-cube 40' containers though.  Jeff - My 53' containers don't seem to fit in these well cars.

Anthony, I don't seem to have any drag on my set. They seem to roll real nice. For that matter all the sets I have roll nice. I also have previous 5 car sets in CN zebra scheme, Conrail brown, TTX with the canadian tire containers. I am sure my lighting is making the CSX blue seem different in my pics. The pics I posted was with a suppressed flash. What I did not post are the pics with a forced flash. It made a yellow hue to the pic which combined with the CSX blue container made the container look like it has some green in it. I wish I could find a modern MTH CSX diesel in 2 rail to pull these 5 car sets.  BTW, These cars are made to not accept 53 footers.

@Jeff78rr posted:

I like the look of the different height with these containers. Not all containers are equal on any train- some are hi-cubes, some standard, some 40’s, some 53’s, and yet some are 20’s. Mix them up to make it accurate for sure!

I did not realize that containers are different heights in the real world. I knew about 20's,40's,48's, and 53's.

@jini5 - I have a somewhat odd request.  Can you take photos of the inside ends of your B unit (without containers) and post them?  I need to make sure I'm getting all of these parts back in right.  Looks like I'll have to buy at least one new grab iron.  I was using a special heat gun to straighten the grab irons and the one that was severely bent fractured and then broke off.  The others are straight now.  The good news is the A unit passes inspection, so I'm done with it.

Anthony

@A. Wells posted:

@jini5 - I have a somewhat odd request.  Can you take photos of the inside ends of your B unit (without containers) and post them?  I need to make sure I'm getting all of these parts back in right.  Looks like I'll have to buy at least one new grab iron.  I was using a special heat gun to straighten the grab irons and the one that was severely bent fractured and then broke off.  The others are straight now.  The good news is the A unit passes inspection, so I'm done with it.

Anthony

Hope you don’t mind my photos:

Also, if anyone wants, these are mth containers I’ve got extras of if anyone wants to buy, also will be selling my 10 CSX ones from this set as well. Drop me an email.

@Lehigh Valley Railroad (Chris) - Nope, not at all.  It's going to be a pain to get the broken mount glued back onto the wheel and chain and then another pain to get the wheel and chain mount glued onto the platform.  Whatever that other thing is on the other side with the two circles will be easy.  I might do that later tonight.

Anthony

Anthony, here is a few pics of my B car. Hopefully this helps you. If not, let me know and I can get a few more for you

@jini5 - Thanks, between you and Chris, I have all the info I need to reassemble these pieces.  And, your grab irons are so straight!

So, my set arrived 10/8 and I just cracked open the boxes and examined the contents...

Aside from one slightly bent grab iron on the side facing the bottom of the styrofoam cavity, there's no damage I can see, though I get the impression these cars should have been packed with ribbons around them like you see in locomotive boxes, since all that end detail is rather vulnerable when removing or re-inserting the cars into the styrofoam using the plastic bags. Much better to distribute pulling forces around the center of the carbody+containers when removing them. I'll probably seek out similar ribbons to place around the cars once I get around to actually getting them fully out of their boxes.

For those who don't have these and are curious about how they're packed, the 5-car set comes in a carton around about 19"x10"x21" and the retail packaging has the end cars in a two-car box much like a passenger set add-on, and the center three cars in a larger box similar in size to four-car passenger sets. The difference in box sizes inside the shipping carton is made up with a folded-up piece of cardboard keeping the two-car box from moving about. Of the two retail boxes, I found the two-car set to be the most challenging to pack, as the styrofoam lid doesn't want to snuggle down on the cars and has to be kept pressed in to re-insert the assembly into the retail box. The three-car set slides in easily by comparison.

---PCJ

@RailRide (PCJ) - Did you notice that the boxes have slightly different coloring and gradients and the gold ribbons are thicker on one than the other?  Perhaps it's just the one I received.  My strong belief is my B unit was damaged when they attempted to insert it into the styrofoam cavity and then stuff the plastic into the the sides of the car.  In doing so, they completely wrecked the side with the chained wheel.  I worry that I'll be harboring some level of resentment for MTH from this time forward.  I've noticed a steady decline in quality, esp. with the onset of the so called "sell off" of the business.  It really takes the "fun" out of the hobby when you have to spend so much time fixing damaged goods.

I noticed the same thing about the AB unit styrofoam container.  The lid doesn't mate well even with the box empty and reinsertion into the box liner was extremely difficult.

Anthony

I'll have to look at them again once I get back from work. My example did not have any ribbons around the cars--hence my opinion that there should have been. I haven't fully removed any of the cars from the styrofoam cavities as of this writing, but I suspect the AB box was always this way since unusually tight packaging is something I've seen here and there with MTH. I didn't notice any loose pieces within the bags, however.

I don't imagine the molds for the foam have changed, but the 'tightness' of the outer box could vary from production run to production run--or even within one, especially if manual assembly is involved in gluing the box together.

---PCJ

@RailRide (PCJ) - I'm not sure ribbons around the cars would have been helpful...at least for the A & B units.  They were really tight in the cavities and I had to work carefully to extract them.  No issues with the other box.  I could see the loose and broken pieces in the side of the bag when I started to extract the B unit.  There were some small yellow grained pieces in both the A & B bags.  These came from where the bottom grid attaches to the walls.  In both cases from the far right end mount (looking down).  Since these aren't visible, I'm not concerned.

Another thing I've been meaning to mention, is that, if you have a non high cube container in the bottom and place one of the MTH 48' containers on top, it will not set flush with the lower container because the molding of the ends (whatever you call them) prevent these 48' containers from going beyond a certain depth.  In this case, the lower container needs to be shimmed upward for aesthetic purposes.

I just ordered two new grid irons for this puppy and a mail catcher for my B&O RPO from the new MTH parts site.

Anthony

@A. Wells posted:

@RailRide (PCJ) - Did you notice that the boxes have slightly different coloring and gradients and the gold ribbons are thicker on one than the other?  Perhaps it's just the one I received.

In the case of the retail boxes, yes, mine are two different shades of purple. Just tells me that they used off-the shelf/existing packaging whose graphics strayed from a benchmark (assuming one was set) as new products were introduced over the years.

---PCJ

@RailRide (PCJ) - I was comparing these cars to the older twin stack sets (mainly the CSX one that I have).  In my opinion, there is more finer detail present on these than the older sets.  In comparing them to photos of the Atlas TTX twin stack (Heritage Logo), there appears to be much more detail present on the Atlas cars esp. in regards to the chains and such on the sides.  The 224 FRA Striping is also not present AND I have seen photos where they are present ().  Interestingly enough, that unit appears to be a 40' only twin stack.

I don't think I've ever seen Gunderson well cars like the above with anything but 40' wells. As for the striping, I understand Smokebox Graphics sells reflective strips sized for O scale rolling stock. I've not heard of actual reflective strips factory-installed on models.

---PCJ

@RailRide posted:

I don't think I've ever seen Gunderson well cars like the above with anything but 40' wells. As for the striping, I understand Smokebox Graphics sells reflective strips sized for O scale rolling stock. I've not heard of actual reflective strips factory-installed on models.

---PCJ

The latest 48' husky stack ttx cars from MTH have them applied.  I'm looking at the one with the Hamburg SUD containers right now.  They're not very "reflective".

@Lehigh Valley Railroad - I started to offer you $2.49 for your CSX containers.

@A. Wells posted:

@jini5 - I noticed that height difference with the older 48' Hanjin containers as well.  I was too lazy to measure but I knew it was about 1/4" higher.  I have no idea why there is the size difference with older MTH containers but I do have the containers from my newer MTH 48' husky stacks to switch out with the CSX ones as desired.  (Shame the Lionel ones aren't scale length wise...I have a small army of those.)   I also have the CSX 5 car in a box somewhere with those Nedloyd containers.  I was too have two of the TTX instead of the one but I decided against having two.  Your CSX containers look much more blue than mine.  Maybe it's because you have decent lighting to take photos with For some reason, mine seem much darker than what I'm accustomed to.  Do you notice any drag when you're running them?  (Oddly enough they don't drag as bad as my recent B&O passenger car acquisitions but it's still noticeable.) Anthony

Anthony, step outside on a sunny day and let that sun shine on those CSX blue containers. I think they really pop in the sunlight. So how do we simulate sunshine on the layout? Seems to me that lighting matters when it comes to the CSX containers. I am happy with mine.

@jini5 - It's funny you should bring this particular of sunlight up this morning.  I just ordered several full spectrum daylight 4ft led strips from Amazon this morning for that very reason.  (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G2Q4VZN)  I did want (and prefer) t8 fluorescent full spectrum bulbs, but I wasn't sold on the current offerings from Amazon.  (I used to get Hagan Aquarium t8's that had a cri of 98, however, these are no longer available.)  Should these led's not do the trick, I'll take another look for fluorescents.

Anthony

P.S. I might start a separate thread on this topic to see what others are using to light their layouts.

@jini5 - I got those lights today.  They are fantastic and very bright.  They do need some type of reflector/diffuser.  I actually have them pointed toward the ceiling to help diffuse the light.  Two is really all I need in the "office" and three would probably blind me.  All the containers take on more realistic color tones with these lights as well.  I'll work on getting some type of reflector for them this week.

Anthony