While weaving my way up and down the many aisles of the Amherst Railway Society Railroad Hobby Show a few weeks ago, I visited the MicroTrains booth. There I had the pleasure of meeting Eric Smith, President and CEO of MicroTrains. Mr. Smith and I have exchanged many an e-mail so it was nice to finally meet face to face. Mr. Smith sat me down and shared some new product news for 2017 . . . namely the introduction of 3 new n-scale toolings: N 70’ Husky Stack Well Car, N 50’ Box Cars and N 73” Single Window Coach. The car I want to talk about here is the first item Mr. Smith showed me and had me hold: the metal cast N 70’ Husky Stack Well Car (Trailer Train – Road #56606/9). This car is bright yellow with black lettering and a red herald on ASF Ride Control trucks. For some time now, MicroTrains has manufactured an 89’ TOFC modified flat car for hauling oversized loads to modern auto racks and containers. But this new well car represents a more modern intermodal freight service product offering for the company. The car’s well allows for the double-stacking of modern-size 53’ and 48’ containers as well as smaller 20’ and 40’ containers. The 70’ Husky Stack Well Car was introduced by Gunderson Rail Services in 1990 and was the first non-articulated well car on the market. Mr. Smith: Thank you for taking the time to chat with TroveStar and congratulations on the company’s 45th anniversary of creating N-scale rolling stock and other products in the small city of Talent in southern Oregon, USA! You can see the mid-February releases of this body style in the N-Scale database on TroveStar here: MicroTrains N 70’ Husky Stack Well Car (Trailer Train – Road #56606/9)
I don't want to be That Guy, but 1) Why another Gunderson 48' well car when Athearn already has this (I don't see much difference between the two); and 2) Why not a Thrall or Trinity or other prototype well car? Honestly, I was quite disappointed this was not a 53' well car, especially since no N scale manufacturer has ever made a RTR single 53' well before.
One major difference is that these new models are metal rather than plastic frames. Should allow them to track better. Also should be friendlier for magnetized containers. I do indeed like the Athearn (MDC) model, but I am pleased to see another high quality tooling from MTL. Also, we can expect new releases every month or two (similar to the horse car tooling releases) whereas with the Athearn models, the next release may be quite a ways off. Lastly I expect MTL will produce road names and paint schemes that may have not been covered by Athearn, but that is just my guess.
I didn't pursue the 53' because I understood someone else was doing it...now we know that. Seems no matter what we do we become the heavy LOL Anyway, yes we will be releasing it more often then Athearn is probably going to, in different combinations with a variety of containers. I think if you do well cars you can never have enough so even though we both have them, everyone is served. I also choose protos to fill voids in our product line because I can't guarantee Athearn or anyone else is going to be in business tomorrow. I need to consider what we need to offer going forward. Joe
And yet...you folks did a 48' knowing another company already did it... I wouldn't be complaining if you folks did both a 48' and a 53'...]hint, hint]
You can't make everybody happy. As for me, I agree that you can't have enough well cars, and will probably buy every number MT makes, along with more of the Athearn ones, and the FVM when they get around to them. Will also buy more from Kato and DI if they ever get produced again. And if ScaleTrains and Atlas gets into the act (why else make containers?) I'll buy those too. As it is, I can probably make two prototypical length trains with what I already have. You can never have enough intermodal!
I don't mind the 48ft wells as much since I model the mid 90s to early 00s when 53 footers weren't as common as they are now. (Which isn't to say I wouldn't buy 53ft cars, I would!) But I would like more 3-car sets as opposed to single cars. Of course I understand that single cars may be more marketable. I'm interested to see which schemes are coming next on this car since this first one is too late for my era.
Paint scheme-wise, when it comes to post early-80s intermodal, all you really need are well cars/flatcars in TTX. Actual RR (i.e. non-TTX) schemes are not that vital anyway and only make up 35% of a train at the most. Plus, I'm sure MTL willl come out with an era-appropriate black TTX scheme for you, since not very many (if any) 48' single well cars are around these days with the red TTX logo to begin with!
Of course, it's mainly the black TTX which I'm waiting for. But since as you say the number of RR owned cars is limited and as I mentioned the number of single unit well cars in any one train should also be limited it makes sense to combine them in the much shorter than real life trains I'm planing. And personally I have a bit of a soft spot for both the BN blue/red logo and the SP Speed Lettering logo which appeared on these and other well cars in the era I mentioned.
I've seen those in the 5-unit sets but not in the single-unit varieties. I'm sure they did/do exist, it's just that they weren't as common.
SP didn't own any single car husky stacks (only the 5 car sets of the Maxi-III) and whilst BN did, I think only the "All-Purpose" version received the multi-colored BN logo - the husky stack was delivered with the white BN logo.