What is your opinion about silhouette windows ?

I love 'em!    I go out of my way to find Pax cars with the traditional silhouettes.

Take your pick!  You like either vanilla or chocolate ice cream!  LOL!  My American Flyer with silouhettes suits me fine while I build the level of detail elsewhere.  I've watched Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited blast through my town and it's often hard to tell the difference about what is readily discernible.

Phil

I don't mind. When the trains are going by I don't really pay attention to the fact that they are silouette's.

I wont buy any more cars with silouettes, they are just not as good looking as cars with finished interiors.

The only cars I have with silouettes is my Polar Express set which emerges from under the layout after Thanksgiving every year and rules the rails till after New Years.

not on my layout!!!

If they don't fall out then I like them.  BigRail

One good thing about silhouette windows is that it is easy to put interiors in them, and they are inexpensive on the used market.  I've done about five in the past.  Recently, I bought seven nice Lionel heavyweight cars at really good prices, including a diner.  I will put interiors in them and, repainted, they will be my Blue Comet.

I did not have trains as a kid, so there is no nostalgia factor for me.  Additionally, I look forward not backward; I’ve got too much left to do to look to the past.  The future for me is more realism (sound, control, visual detail), and although I’m not a rivet counter and never will be, detailed interior cars are all I will buy now.  I do have two sets of older Williams 18" cars with color silhouette strips that I run behind my Williams scale GG-1 pair; someday I may replace the cars with some with interiors.

Ron

I'll never buy them.

Andy

I am currently running two passenger trains on my layout. One, an MTH Railking C&O passenger train with streamlined 60' passenger cars with detailed interiors, have RMT "Beepeople" (SP?) installed in them. 

The other is a Pennsylvania RR passenger train with 3 Lionel 0-27 passenger cars, found in the PRR Flyer expansion pack. They have silhouettes in the windows. I pull the cars with an MTH Imperial K4. 

As someone that often has little time to run trains, let alone put people into passenger cars, the silhouettes are fine. I'm not bothered by them. Do I like the look of both "people" and silhouettes? Yes. I have no real preferences for either one but I do agree high end cars should have people as with most, if not all cars nowadays. One thing I do NOT like are a string of empty passenger cars with detailed interiors. 

When I was a kid, I thought they were the coolest thing. I'm older now and I know better.

That sounds like a great project.

The Blue comet ran not far from where I grew up.

Vulcan your wrong. It's like "Pong" vs E-box 360. Don

Mr. M, your right on the money. If someone made a kit with new lighting and a drop in or slide in interior they would make a fortune. Think of the tens of thousands of cars that could be converted. Want to start and new business? Don

I suppose if I were running scale locomotives and cars, I'd want detailed interiors.  But I don't, and I rather like the appearance of the silhouettes.

I never gave it a second thought.  It's all part of TOY trains.

Silhouettes in the windows of the Oval Office - that would bother me.

I was around 8 years old when I added the first passenger car to my railroad. It was an 027 "Elizabeth" 2445. I was fascinated by the silhouettes. My grandfather pointed to the silhouettes of the old guy and the little kid waving his arms, and said "That's you and me!"

Every time I run my passenger cars with Flat People, I remember my Grandpa. I see no reason, almost 60 years later, to mess with that memory.

Archaic.

Thank you all so far. I am surprised by the intensity of some of the "dislikes".... Not saying anybody is wrong but just surprised....

About two years ago the wife and I decided to do some remodeling of the house.  We're on a limited budget so we figured it would save us a bundle if we simply put silhouettes in our windows rather than spend all that money on interior detail.  Since we don't entertain much no one much noticed.  A mixed blessing is that the neighbors don't seem to come by even when we invite them.  Cuts down on the food and drink budget, but we get a little lonely.  The house is a bit more nostalgic, and we don't have to be painting all those figures all the time (but they're about all the company we get these days).

As far as trains go I like them both.  Maybe I watch too many freaky movies, but I'm not really sure what all those little people are doing when the lights go out.  Remember in Toy Story it went both ways.

Alan

When I was purchasing passenger cars I would stay away from silhouttes.  Never liked the look.

Do not like them anymore..I prefer to buy passenger cars with the interiors finished and people sitting in the seats.  However, I have both due to having cars form many years ago and  finished interiors were not even thought of at the time in history.

Actually, some Lionel Standard gauge had very impressive interiors in the 1930s.

As some of you mentioned, taking actual photos of people in seats, then mounting them over a translucent background might be interesting. However, there are many, many window configurations out there.

One choice that was not brought up...printed artwork of people vs. the true silhoette...both available today.

It's only forum peer pressure.  Feel free to disregard.

Pete

Silhouette cars were there during childhood and I remember wondering about the people inside - who they were, where they were going and what they were doing.  In that "toy train memory" way, they hold a special place in my heart.  And I have an older Santa Fe Chief set with 15" silohoutte cars that I will keep that way. 

However as I said above, nowadays I like the fact lthat silhouette cars are not high priced in the used field: it's easy to add interiors - and fun, and leaves you to be creative about arranging people, etc.: Ilike to re-create train scenes from movies.  sleeper compartments with:

-James Bond fighting Donald Grant in From Russia with Love,

- James Bond and Tatiana romonova "enjoying themselves" in another

- the killing of Ratchett in Murder on the Orient Express,

and

- the final solution scene with Poirot and all the suspects in the lounge car of that same movie

- the end lounge car with Fred McMurray on crutches on the rear platform in Double Indemnity.

I looked into having interiors made and have decided in most cases the cost to benefit factor is not there.  So I am looking to buy all of the scrap cars with interiors I can salvage.  I just saw some sets of MTH 18" interiors go for $10 on the bay.

I dont mind them at all, Postwar, MPC, and the LTI era aluminum and madison cars. I have switched some Lionel ones to American Flyer silhouettes. They fit the Lionel cars perfectly, and I make my own instead of ordering repros. I take the American Flyer or Lionel strips, place them on a copier and photo copy them on frosted plastic. The American Flyer ones always seemed better. I love the guy smoking the pipe and the woman smoking a cigarette in the windows!

UP does have shades in their domes.......................

I redid the MTH PRR "Fleet of Modernism" by tediously inserting figures in the seats due to the fact all the cars had some fairly strong interior lighting and it looked sort of silly..all these empty seats.It defeated the purpose of a passenger train. To make a long story short, I was disappointed on the first run as the folks in the cars looked more like silhouettes unless I slowed the run to a crawl, craned my neck down at window level and peered inside. Looked better, no doubt. Was it worth the effort? Not really. In hindsight, if there had been silhouettes instead of an empty detailed interior, I would have called it "good enough." I am also into G scale outside, and that is an entirely different story..When visitors come by, I am reminded of the stand off rule someone once suggested..if it looks good from a distance..good enough. I was once really into details and guess what? Only myself and fellow modelers really appreciated them. Most visitors focus on the "big picture." I might take one and put dogs and cats in the seats..and I doubt anyone would notice.

I love them, as well as the plain frosted strips. In fact I like them better then the interiors.

Bill

A very interesting take on the question. The bigger picture. Worth thinking about!

Silhouettes are classic.  I enjoy them as much as listening to a favorite song from the past, viewing black and white films, tasting a favorite dessert, riding in a vintage automobile, savoring precious memories, and gazing into the eyes of my high school sweetheart.  "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose ..."

What, me worry?

The Welz Metroliner and Amtrak passenger sets have sort of a compromise...silhouettes, but they are mounted further inside the cars, and away from the windows, creating a slightly more realistic effect.

On a more general note about passenger car lighting and details, the other night I was hanging around in New London CT, waiting for a ferry, and watched as several Amtrak trains went by.  Even from as little as 100 feet away, it was difficult to see into the cars, owing, I suppose, to tinted windows and reduced lighting for the evening.

I think the passenger cars with silhouette windows have a nostalgic charm all to their own, and they're very representative of an earlier era of toy train manufacturing.  While my preference for passenger cars nowadays is largely 18" with detailed interiors, I have chosen to keep a few select silhouette-window passenger sets as a remembrance of how stuff was made in the past.  

There's a lot to be said for modeling techniques that offer a "hint at reality" -- then letting our mind take us the rest of the way there.  Silhouette-window passenger cars are a great example of that.  And for those looking at them that way, you probably won't find a better bang for your dollar out there.  Heck, you can probably grab an entire set for close to the price once paid for the set's diner or vista dome car alone!  

David

When I had a layout, and my passenger trains ran by me at a scale 213 MPH, silhouettes in windows didn't bother me at all.

I remove the silhouettes and replace them with a green tinted opaque gel.In the case of the Williams 72' passenger cars,I also add diaphragms,replace the bright light bulbs with capacitors and leds to eliminate flickering.

Ricky

I love silhouettes.  I have two on every shade.  (name that song)

My thoughts exactly.  When you are more than a few feet away, it doesn't matter as much.

"I Drank Until She Looked Good to Me, But I Woke Up with a Pig in a Blanket"?