SOU Waffles Can be Ordered...

[James Costello]

It takes a lot of balls to admit your wrong and the product needs fixing. He could have just told us we were holding it wrong.

It gets easier with practice though and they've had some of that already. 

Seriously though, thanks to Jason for noticing this so soon and getting the correction.

[bbussey]

I think the tooling on the Athearn roofs blow the ExR roofs away by a wide margin.  I would love to have more of the Athearn roofs than the 12ea. that I at one time ended up with and am quickly exhausting.
The other advantage of the Athearn roof is that it is tooled specifically for a car with overhanging roof eaves.

That is true, they are nicely tooled overhanging roofs and the Stanray is especially pleasing.  I'll look into the castings, but it's going to be a few months down the road when some money frees up.

What models do you guys use these roofs, on anyway?

Various kitbashes.  The Stanray is particularly good for prototypes of the 1960s, of which there are few N scale models of.

... It takes a lot of balls to admit your wrong and the product needs fixing. He could have just told us we were holding it wrong.

They get major kudos for jumping on what is the best solution from the modeler's standpoint so quickly, given that it will cost money in new tooling and extra shipping charges.  This actually helps erase the earlier perceptions of how they viewed the N scale market, so in a way this misstep and how they handled it might pay huge dividends for them down the road.
 

[Robbman]

What models do you guys use these roofs, on anyway?

Models that don't utilize stolen IP

[wazzou]

Daniel -

The Northern Pacific and Great Northern much like many other railroads, I'm sure, built many of their own boxcars.
The shops would fabricate the cars using supplied components, like doors, roofs, ends, brake hardware and such.  These parts were provided by Pullman, Stanray, Youngstown, and so on.
I like to scratch build and/or kitbash a number of these cars using available parts.

What models do you guys use these roofs, on anyway?

[milw156]

Got my cars in the mail yesterday & thought they looked great, tho obviously I am not an expert about what roofs they were supposed to have! Really appreciate not having to add metal wheels & body mount the couplers on these.  A great addition to the N scale fleet! And thanks for making the correct roofs available, I remember Kato doing this on their 2nd run of GP38-2's when the Milwaukee units had white lettering on the hoods instead of black! Thanx for a great model!!!!!
Blaine, will you be able to make the door opening hardware available for bashing projects???
Rick

[ljudice]

I had some with incorrectly installed wheels as well, once fixed they rolled perfectly...

[Bob Bufkin]

Received mine today.  No wheel problems.  Considering it took me all of 15 minutes to upwrap the package (bubble wrap and even more pubble wrap, plus loads of tape), it's no surprise they came in one piece.

[Mark5]

Only way I'll get one is too piggy back on a group order with another local, if any.

[ljudice]

I commend them on their excellent, bullet-proof packaging. 
I just do not know how to get the wheels to stay in the trucks.

That's strange....    All three of mine are behaving normally...

[Bob Bufkin]

Only way I'll get one is too piggy back on a group order with another local, if any.

Mike, wish you would have asked me, I would have been happy to piggy back.  Somewhat out of my era but these are cars I well remember.  If I decide to order anymore I'll let you know.

Bob

[davefoxx]

I think I have the answer on what is going on with the loose wheelsets.  I received my three waffle boxcars today and out of twelve wheelsets, four were not sitting in the trucks correctly.  When the cars didn't roll that well, I looked closer (thanks to the heads-up from previous posts) and, lo and behold, the wheelsets didn't fall out but weren't sitting in the trucks correctly.  Apparently, the sideframes were bent outward enough that the wheelsets popped out of the journals but were still held in place by the sideframe.  This created much drag and would have been a 100% guarantee of a derailment, because the two axles of the truck were not parallel.

The easy fix: pull the wheelset out and straighten the sideframes.  A close look at the ends of the sideframe will show that they are bowed out, so just pinch the sideframes between your finger and thumb.  Once the sideframes are straight, the wheelsets pop back in and the cars roll very well.

I'm not sure what caused this.  I would speculate that this is a manufacturing issue rather than a shipping problem, because, as pointed out earlier, ExactRail does a great job of packing the cars with a lot of bubblewrap and tape.  My favorite part of opening the package was the handwriting on the wad of bubblewrap that said "WAFFLES."

Other than this minor issue, the cars look fantastic.  I compared these new ER waffle cars to an MDC/Roundhouse waffle box, and, well, the old car has now officially been retired from my roster.  I look forward to the replacement roofs.  I also hope that ER would be willing to offer SCL, SBD, and RF&P waffle boxcars, even if slightly foobed.

Hope this helps,
DFF

[unittrain]

Got mine today and they are top notch! hope they do them in Chessie next.

[rogergperkins]

I replaced the original wheels in one car with MTL wheels; it rolled twice as far in my "test."  I have a Micro-Trains "rerailer" that I set on the track and release the car allowing it to roll on straight track.  I do this a few times. 
I have replaced a lot of old MTL wheel sets with new MTL wheels and find great improvement in distance the cars roll.
Still do not understand why my experience the the waffles differs from others.

[davefoxx]

Still do not understand why my experience the the waffles differs from others.

Roger,

Did you read my previous post?

DFF

[Bob Bufkin]

Still haven't found the one wheel which came out when I dropped it.  Guess I'll have to replace with the MTL wheels.  Maybe if I walked around in bare feet I'll quickly find it.