Opinion on San Juan Car Company O Scale tank cars

I think the detail is gorgeous.    I agree they are very fragile.    As for more, they do not fit my era which is late 40s so I don't have to worry about it.    I thought the prototypes might have been originally narrow gauge cars.

Beautiful cars; have 2.  Fragile is in the hands of the beholder. 

Fragile is an understatement. 

Fragile is relative, and what works for some does not for others.    I have an operating layout and operate as part of a round robin group that rotates and operates a group of layouts that involve switching using a number of methods for routing cars.    My layout utilizes 8 operators for a full crew, 2 for the yard crew (hostler and  yard master), one for the Connellsville industrial area, 4 road crews and a dispatcher/tower operator.    

I generally have a core group of 4-5 and a less frequent group of guests of 4-5.     All these jobs except the DS/tower guy involve coupling and uncoupling cars at some point which  means interaction with the stuff on the RR.    

So unfortunately, accidents happen, and some guys are more ham fisted than others, and sometimes people are in a hurry.     As a results, stirrups, grab irons, lift bars etc get knocked off cars, especially if made of scale size styrene.    If I ban everyone who has an accidetn from the RR, I will run out of operators!    So for me I like the detail, but I like it to stay where it belongs rather than next to the track.     It is a trade off for a little sturdier and over size maybe, and scale size and prone to breakage.     I find the Atlas O cars with many metal details on plastic bodies to be a nice compromise vs the plastic details.    

If I was the only one using the stuff and it was mainly for display, it would not matter much.

prrjim posted:

........some guys are more ham fisted than others.............

Some modelers are the whole pig......

Thanks for the advice. I think I'm leaning towards prrjim's approach. I'm building my layout for operation, and the cars while nice, are to fragile for ops. 

I built a Labelle kit a couple years ago (the build thread is here on the forum) and I was using it to test the rail and curves I'm laying down, and I accidentally knocked it off and it took the big plunge. It fell 50 inches or so to a hard concrete floor. Surprisingly, the only damage it took was a broken wood bolster which I reglued. That was it. I have the feeling these cars would not have fared so well.

I have had no issues with these. They look great and at $30 a hit were a fanatic value.

What Dan said

If you are modeling the 1920s the “Gramps” Van Dyke Class V frameless tank cars will fit right in your era. While not the most common tank car they are truly your most accurate solution since all of your era’s equipment will have K/KD/KC brakes and on tank cars they are completely visible.  No other O scale tank car has K brakes to the best of my knowledge nor are the most common tank cars, UTLX type X, available in O scale.

The famed “Gramps” tank cars started out as standard gauge cars so they can easily be “standard gauged”.  For durability sake you could look for a old PFM brass one, add standard gauge arch bar trucks and standard gauge coupler pockets/draft gear.  

And decal sets are available to letter the standard gauge UTLX Van Dyke cars.  

Enthusiastic scratch builders could add rieveted steel frames to them and make cars that were used well into the 1960’s!