Walthers Coil Car
Walthers
Coil Car...
Walthers came out with a coil car years ago that was
accurate for the B&O and C&O fleets of cars. But, they stopped
making it several years ago. The C&O helped design these cars
in the first place, so the Walthers cars are perfectly accurate for either
the B&O or C&O cars. With the B&O and C&O having
the two biggest fleets of these cars in the nation, you need some for your
Chessie pike. Walthers has just rereleased this kit with rounded
hoods. They have yet to come out with a B&O or C&O version
with these rounded hoods. Keep your eyes peeled, a rerelease is sure
to happen soon.
If you find one of the old kits, buy it. They run
on eBay for $12 or more a piece. Compare this to $7 or so for any
other normal Walthers car and you can see there is a HUGE demand for them
out there. I have only 3 but will buy any I see in the future for
$10 or less.
Below is a Dean Heacock pic of a real coil car.
Note that these two hoods are rounded hoods and the hoods on my car below
are beveled. Chessie had both. Both beveled and rounded hoods
came in blue with yellow writing or yellow with blue writing. You
need some of each to be protypical. The Walthers kit comes with yellow
beveled hoods, but you could easily repaint them blue and decal them or
even buy some of the rounded hoods now available on the new rereleased
car and paint and decal them.
Assembly is straight forward for a Walthers coil car.
It is much like making a flat car. Where you make your money with
this car is the hoods. Weathering the hoods will make your coil car
look realistic. In the pic above you see the cleanest blue hood ever
(it must have just got painted) and an absolutely typical looking yellow
hood. Hoods rusted very quickly, so keep that in mind.
The faults I know of on the Walthers kit are that the
hoods do not come with the proper end lettering and the consolidated stencil
decal needs to be replaced. I added the letters on the ends of the
hoods to my cars, but did not correct the stencil. You can see a
"B&O" on the left hood's end in the pic below and a "C&O" on the
far left of the real hood in the pic above.
Below is a pic of one of my Walthers Coil Cars.
