Questions About Atlas O Rolling Stock Kits?

From the 70s. Scale, but primitive.  Some of the cars got upgrades and became the basis for the modern Trainman line. Most everything on the bodies is molded in, but the detail parts exist, or you can bend your own grab irons, etc.

They can be found at shows for under $10 and for that they are good buys.  The wheels are plastic, but the trucks readily take Intermountain wheelsets.
This is a $2 caboose with about $40 worth of paint and decals that I painted up for my son.

I bet you're looking at the '70s vintage Austrian Roco O scale kits. I happen to think they are okay; easy to upgrade and fun to play around with...

EDIT: I see "Boilermaker1" beat me to it...

Mark in Oregon

Those are scale cars.    As mentioned above, most detail is cast on.    The ladders and brake wheels and a few details are add-on.    They are based on real prototype cars also, so they are models of real cars, not imagineered.

As far as I can tell, they are the same cars as many in the Atlas O trainman line today.   I have compared the gondolas and the bodies are the same.   I have looked at photos of the other cars such as the "sliding Door boxcar" and "plug door boxcar" they appear to be the same bodies.

The changes that Atlas O made this time around was to totally revamp the frames, underbodies, couplers and trucks.   The new trainman cars have diecast underbodies as far as I know, and diecast trucks that appear the same as the trucks in the master line.    These are big changes.

However, for the price the old kits and built up atlas cars from the 80s are a very good deal.    You can usually get them pretty cheap and then change out trucks and couplers and add weight if you  like.     It is fun to fiddle with them.    If you mess up, you haven't really lost much.

I think the line offered then was the sliding door boxcar, plugdoor boxcar, ore car, the 52 ft steel gondola, and a wide-vision caboose.   

I don't think Atlas has released the ore car in its trainman line.