Model Forum / General / Railroads / September 2004

Odd that what looks to be a  one piece piece of injection molded plastic (
smokebox and boiler look to be all one piece of plastic) would, or could, be
done in two separate "colors" of plastic.

Must be an interesting bit of tooling on those molds if two separate colors
of plastic go into the one "pour".

Hi Frank;

I personally don't have an answer for you, but you could try
Hobbycraft, which is LL's agent here in Canada. They're at
www.hobbycraft.com .  They do the "Canadianization" of LL's
stuff, and usually use P2K or P1K stuff to decorate their own
semi-Canadian locos and cars, including the Heritage steam.

Be warned, though; Hobbycraft has only a mediocre reputation
amongst Canadian modellers in general.  They've just come out
with a run of 36' Fowler cars in CN, CP, and THB.  The nits have
been picked, and, if the response on the Canadian modelling Yahoo
Groups is any indication, most folks will wait for the New
England Rail Service version.  Hobbycraft's version is about
$35.00, is RTR, missing dimensional data on one side of the CN
run, has a die-cast and very sparse underbody, and may or may not
sit too high.  And they've been touting these cars for a year or
two as one of the most accurate Canadian models made.

In Hobbycraft's defense, however, they have taken the risk a few
times to produce "close-enough" Canadian prototype models.
Because we in Canada are such a small market, I don't think any
of the majors, (LL, Atlas, Athearn, etc.), would bother taking
that kind of risk.  Just not worth it for them.

They also do not enjoy a good reputation for responding to
customer's concerns in a timely fashion.  So if you do contact
them through their website, they may or may not respond; but, if
they do, at least you'd get it straight from the horse's mouth.

Garth Allen,
Ottawa, ON