Elsewhere on the forums, there's a thread lamenting that Saturday at York was a bust. I liked it. Uncrowded and slower paced, and sellers willing to make deals. I was there all week, and I was not looking for anything on Saturday, I thought I was finished and just enjoying looking around.
A few times Thursday and Friday I had walked past a set of Roberts Lines Standard Gauge freight; noted it as a curiosity but not really slowed down. Saturday, there was nobody else around and nowhere else to be, so I asked the seller about it. Five freight cars, he was asking $100 each, not unreasonable for an unusual item like these. I offered him $100 for all five, and have never seen someone wrap them up so fast before I changed my mind. He said I was the first all week to even look at them, and he was extremely glad to be rid of them.
Back home, I am wondering what I got myself into. It's hard to find a complimentary or kind word for them. "Clean lines", I guess, but they're really pretty unimaginative. The wheels, trucks, and couplers all need work, nothing turns freely. An oddity to be sure, and given my love of Ives and Hornby detail and lithography, they are really kind of... ugly?
They are also GIGNORMOUS: here they are next to their Lionel counterparts:
Not sure what I'm going to do with these really.
The cars don't look that big running behind that.
