# Source for UN-assembled HO rolling stock kits?



## santafealltheway (Nov 27, 2012)

I've done my basic googling but i must be using the wrong search terms or something 

I'm just looking for somewhere to buy Un-assembled, unpainted rolling stock kits, other than used ones on ebay...


Thanks!


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## bluenavigator (Aug 30, 2015)

Do you mean unfinished/undecorated bare rolling stock kits?


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## tkruger (Jan 18, 2009)

Do a search for Athearn Blue Box or Roundhouse. They were major manufacturers of basic kits in the past. They no longer make them but Athearn flooded the market with them. They are common at many shows. This said both of these will need details and upgrades to bring them to the Proto 2000 standard etc. They will make good runners out of the box.

Acurail still makes kits to the best of my knowledge. My LHS stocks them. Bowser also makes some, I have only seen hoppers and cabooses at the LHS for Bowser though.


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## MtRR75 (Nov 27, 2013)

Yes Accurail does make kits. They are pretty simple to build -- not very many parts. They do make unlabelled ones. They call them "Data Only" -- just the car weight, etc -- no road name or number.

Their website lists all of the cars that they ever made. Many are no longer available, but still show up on eBay. They are still coming out with new ones, and some are listed as future releases. They also sell many of the parts separately. So if you lose or break one, or get a kit off of eBay that is missing something, you can probably get it from them.

http://www.accurail.com


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Accurail and Intermountain both sell undecorated kit versions of their models. Intermountain provides some nice detail, Accurail has far less individual pieces and can throw together in about a minute, similar to older Athearn "blue box" kits but far nicer in execution of the tooling.

Some of the others still do as well, but generally on a pretty limited basis and if you blink you miss it.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

tkruger said:


> Do a search for Athearn Blue Box or Roundhouse. They were major manufacturers of basic kits in the past. They no longer make them but Athearn flooded the market with them. They are common at many shows. This said both of these will need details and upgrades to bring them to the Proto 2000 standard etc.


Many of the old Athearn and MDC kit cars weren't necessarily based on a specific real world car, and especially in the case of the older Athearn boxcars with clunky opening doors, the tooling is actually quite crude. "need details and upgrades" is about the understatement of the week, and in some cases, it's essentially not possible to do anything appropriately realistic with them.

(Some of the modern outside-post boxcars, like the "Railbox" (what a dog) and the PS 5344 (much nicer, but...) were famously designed to fit an existing underframe for 50' boxcars, making the entire body a full scale foot too wide. Yes that is noticeable beside properly sized cars; that's a 10% error on a 10-foot wide car.)


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## santafealltheway (Nov 27, 2012)

*Thanks for your answers!*

I guess I'll have to stick with Ebay, Mostly looking for old timey passenger cars 

Thanks for the input guys!


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## tkruger (Jan 18, 2009)

santafealltheway said:


> I guess I'll have to stick with Ebay, Mostly looking for old timey passenger cars
> 
> Thanks for the input guys!


Roundhouse made those. I do not think Athearn ever did. You may also want to look for craftsman kits, these are more difficult to assemble and assume a higher level of skill but produce a more detailed care.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

tkruger said:


> Roundhouse made those. I do not think Athearn ever did. You may also want to look for craftsman kits, these are more difficult to assemble and assume a higher level of skill but produce a more detailed care.


Was Roundhouse a separate company prior to acquisition by Athearn? They are now, and have been for a while, a product line of Athearn, itself a division of Horizon Hobbies.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Roundhouse was a Model Die Casting brand. Athearn bought MDC 5-10 years ago.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

cv_acr said:


> Roundhouse was a Model Die Casting brand. Athearn bought MDC 5-10 years ago.


Probably closer to ten, because I noticed it when I was still buying a lot of rolling stock 6-7 years ago. Thanks for the info.


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