Factory weathered cars

[Ntrainz1]

I see Kato is offering factory weathered HO cars on their website. They are "hand assembled and then weathered by an artist in Japan".
$90 for a set of three. I also saw an ad in RMC for Athearn preweathered HO Railboxes. Is this a beginning of a tread and will it come to N?


Bob.

[Chris333]

Wish they did those GE hoppers with the center cut outs in N scale.

[3rdrail]

ERTL offered "preweathered" HO scale cars a few years back. They were pretty uniform and and didn't look particularly realistic. They were about as popular as pickle-flavored ice cream.  

Editorial: First we got ready-to-run cars and locos, then we got professional layout builders. Now we have preweathered freight cars. All that's left is to run the damn things. But wait, there are computer programs to do that, too! Guess the hobby now consists of sitting on your fat butt and watching little trains go roundy-round.  :

[John]

Guess the hobby now consists of sitting on your fat butt and watching little trains go roundy-round.  :

Don't forget watching them go roundy round really fast .. oh wait .. thats tinplate ..

[Allentown Hump]

Heaven forbid anyone does ANY modeling anymore...  :

[Caleb Austin]

deluxe inovations did some n scale weatherd cars they look disgusting though

[Mark5]

you just wait! the layout and models that I'm contracting to have built!

then I'll recruit someone to run them for me.

[ljudice]

Wait a minute here...

Pre-faded cars would be a real help - for example the Walthers HO Thrall 2 bay hoppers in GWS blue.

There is no way to consistently - across ALL the colors on a car - to fade with a good effect. Unless you paint/decal from scratch with your custom faded decals, that is.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Will it blend?

http://www.willitblend.com

[Nato]

  Do not forget Athearn has just started offering modern era box cars that are factory weathered and in the Magazine adverts look very nice. Hopefully similar cars from them in N will follow.                             Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[Ian MacMillan]

Will it blend?

http://www.willitblend.com

Good thing I sent you that link.

[ljudice]

Yeah, thanks a lot for that link!  Now my wife wants a $400 blender!!!!

Seriously, that was pretty hysterical!

[Ian MacMillan]

  Do not forget Athearn has just started offering modern era box cars that are factory weathered and in the Magazine adverts look very nice. Hopefully similar cars from them in N will follow.                             Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

However.....they look HORRID in person.   They look like someone took a quick spray can of tan paint to them. You'd get something better handing chalk and an airbrush to a 3 year old.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

  Do not forget Athearn has just started offering modern era box cars that are factory weathered and in the Magazine adverts look very nice. Hopefully similar cars from them in N will follow.                             Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

However.....they look HORRID in person.   They look like someone took a quick spray can of tan paint to them. You'd get something better handing chalk and an airbrush to a 3 year old.

I'm pretty sure that's EXACTLY what Athearn is doing.

Yay cheap labor!!!

(I guess it beats working on the commune though...)

[tom mann]

Please...allow me to jump in here... ;D

The reason the DI cars look bad and probably the Athearn ones too is that the pad printing process or the Chinese labor process will result in only one "weathering" color being used.  Even if I just use an airbrush, I will probably paint a minimum of three layers of varying color.  But stopping at the airbrush will result in a model that looks flat.  I then brush paint details will many different colors.  Until manufacturers can duplicate this process, "factory weathering" will look bad.

Now if they could figure out how do rapidly apply a decal with thousands of colors, they would be onto something.

I'm all for "factory prefading", on the other hand.