WHERE DO I GET COMMUTER MODELS?!?!

One of my favorite class of commuter trains that I watched as a kid was the Budd M1 trains that ran on the Long Island Railroad. To me, then, they were oversized subway cars that ran quietly and the coolest looking trains in the world (ah, the eyes of a child). It wasn't until I was an adult, visiting NYC, that I finally got to ride one, which was a smooth and enjoyable ride.

Seems that since commuter rail is becoming more common and popular in the U.S, it stands to reason that there will be "new" model railroaders interested in this aspect of the hobby. Hopefully that will provide an incentive for manufacturers to consider producing RTR commuter equipment.

I would love to get an 8 car set of M2/ M4/ M6 cars used by Metro North on the New Haven line but no one makes a good set. I have been waiting for IHP to make them someday but no luck there and the ones from IWM are not only discontinued but didnt come with all the necessary parts to make the cars.

Sadly, I feel you will never seen much in the way of take it out of the box and run it commuter models produced. The variations in equipment between commuter agencies, even within the same agency is vast.

There really is no "standard" piece of commuter equipment when you start to look into the details. Most (I didn't say all.....there are exceptions) commuter locos are rebuilds of some type, or one off type locomotives, captive to a particular agency or area of the country, not lending themselves to many roadnames option for the manufacturer.

Athearn tried with the F59PHI, but in the end wound up making many fantasy roadnames just to sell more models.

What else is there, the F40PH.....even those did vary from agency to agency in details.

The MP36PH-whateveryouwanttocallit hasn't shown up yet.

Correct cars are another story all together.

Actually, IHP has its own drives, which use a vertically oriented motor to drive one truck.

IMW still encourages the use of a RDC drive to run the models.

The picture of RTR commuter models has improved in recent years. In HO, the models mentioned from Kato and Walthers have been a hit with Midwest modelers. The Walthers Comet 2 cars (not bad for the price, really) were big when they were released in 1994. The Athearn models are nice and fill some other gaps. Con-Cor's new P54 and MP54 models fill a big gap for early commuter and NEC modeling. There have been some new releases in O and N, too, though I am not sure how you all feel about the Lionel M7 cars.

As far as the future goes, I can say that there are a few models planned in HO and I know the subjects because I helped with some of the reference information. If they actually come to fruition, they will make more than a few people happy. We're talking plastic here, not resin!

The bigger model companies are looking for different things to do as it seems we CAN have too many F unit models! The limiting factor is the market. Commuter modeling in particular has always been a limited market and you just will never see the variety in RTR plastic as you would see with, say, freight cars. If you understand how these models are produced, and in particular how much they cost to produce, you will understand why this is the current reality.

Still, there is some hope, as I mentioned!

Mike Bartel
IHP
ihphobby.tripod.com

It's not a matter of encouraging the use of the old RDC drives Chris, it's a matter of some older models that were designed to use that drive as nothing else was available at the time. All of our newer models are designed to use the Stanton drive from NWSL, and the older models can be adapted to work with them as well. The Stanton is but one of several options available to the modeler today. Hollywood Foundry now offers their Diablo drive with 8"-6" wheelbases as a more powerful alternative to the power truck.