Ertl Collectibles HO Freight Cars

When they came out in the 1990s, I passed over the HO freight cars from Ertl Collectibles. This post at a site called Intrernet Modeler gives some background. What it misses is the reason I initially passed them over -- the gondola at least was a knockoff of a Maine Central prototype that was done as a urethane kit that was available from the onetime store at the Rensselaer club. It may have been a certain snobbery on my part that kept me from taking the line more seriously at the time.

More recently, I saw these cars in use in photos of layouts posted on Facebook now and then, and they looked remarkably good. They were quite well detailed for plastic models of the time, they were very well painted, and they were recognizably different from run-of-the-mill cars by Athearn and Roundhouse. So I began to look for them on eBay. At this point, It's hard to find vintage cars with all the pieces on eBay for less than $15-20, while current cars from Accurail are about $20. I've found Ertl cars in this general range. It's possible that their original prices were high for the 1990s market, so there's a lot of new old stock out there.

My most recent find was one of the flat cars. This is a 40-foot car with a K brake, so its prototype dates from about the 1920s through 1940s,and the paint schemes seem to reflect this. Here is the car, a Cotton Belt version, serving as an idler for my Sheepscot pile driver, which is one potential use for these cars on a more modern layout.

I've discovered several things about these cars. One is that the Kadee clone couplers are plastic, and the knuckle spring is a single plastic finger that loses its springiness fairly quickly. It should be replaced with Kadees. However, getting the coupler box cover off without damaging it is a challenge, and anyhow, all model couplers really need to be mounted with screws to allow replacement or adjustment down the road. So the boxes need to be drilled out #50 and tapped 2-56, with matching holes in the covers drilled #43. This will help make the car operable, as will replacing the plastic wheels with Kadees or equivalent.

The flat cars don't have any added metal weight, which means they also need loads to bring them up to an operable weight. The decks are removable and held in place with two small screws under the chassis, which makes weathering the deck easy. Since the paint schemes and details of the cars put them in the 1920s-40s period, potential loads on a more modern themed layout would probably best involve railroad maintenance items like diesel engines, track materials, and so forth. Another use would be to convert them to log cars with log bunks and log loads.

Below is one of the Ertl gons, this one lettered for the Jersey Central.

This has a Chooch 7055 40 foot scrap load installed. This fits easily, a little bit short for the inside length of the car, which is 42 scale feet. The gon also generally dates from the 1920s through 1940s, but it has a nicely detailed AB brake system, and the available paint schemes seem to date more from the 1950s.

This style of low-side 40-foot gon seems to have been common in New England, the Pennsylvania anthracite coal fields, and the Southeastern US. The Ertl road names generally match railroads in these locations. Unlike the flat cars, the Ertl gons have metal weights, but like the flat cars, you need to do some work to install Kadees and metal wheels.