(erielack) Walthers Bethlehem Flush-Deck Cars: First Impression

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

My BN-modeling pal brought over his copies of these long-awaited 89' Bethlehem cars (mine haven't arrived yet). I thought I'd share some highlights. This car was produced beginning in 1968, and along with very similar cars from Pullman-Standard and ACF, became the backbone of the intermodal fleet by 1975. Therefore they're must-haves for layouts depicting EL mainline operations in the 1970's. Note that this is a trailer-only car with (originally) TTX reporting marks. If you want to haul containers "on-deck" you'll have to wait for the Atlas ACF cars to be released later this year. (For the record, "All-Purpose" cars carried TTAX reporting marks, and the less-common TTCX was a container-only car.)

Use caution when ordering this car: as far as I can tell, only 2 or 3 of the 7 roadnames in the initial release are configured as the original car and therefore appropriate for the EL era: 40301 TTX, and 40305 SOU. The rest have the "Twin-45" modification of 1982 and later. However if you must have ATSF or SP cars, don't despair, they're easily backdated as we'll see in a moment.

The good news: the car has accurate dimensions and that low-slung appearance since it sits low on its trucks. It weighs 5oz; the recommended weight for an 89' car is approximately 7oz , but the difference of course, can easily be made up with the trailers. His cars made several loops around my layout without derailing. The detail is outstanding with correctly proprtioned stirrups and handrails and underbody brake equipment which is almost a must on this car due to its visibility. The clever coupler arrangement was introduced by Walthers on the bilevel autorack cars 15 years ago and permits negotiating curves of 24" radius according to Walthers, but of course will look fairly ridiculous on such a sharp curve.
  
The bad news: the trailer hitches are a disappointment and not up to "gold-line" standards. They are a press-fit into holes on the deck since you have a choice of P-S or ACF hitches (plus I think a collapsed-hitch version for circus-loading scenes) but it is not very secure, which is just as well since at a scale 54" they are 6" taller than the prototype, which will give your trailers a pronounced tilted-up-at-the-nose look. I don't know how this happened, but it continues the long tradition of major model manufacturers having difficulty "getting it right" with intermodal equipment. Happily, correctly-proprtioned replacement hitches are available from Details West. The correct hitch is the Pullman-Standard (Trinity) LP-6SA cushioned retractable; being a trailer-only car, the hitches rather than the couplers are cushioned. The closest DW product is the LP-3SA rigid retractable, part #1007, which can be combined with the cushion portion of the supplied hitch to create the LP-6SA. You may want to get on this sooner rather than later, since this will be a popular car and once modelers catch on there will be a run on these hitches. They also have the bridge plates, part #1017. 

Overall, a very nice model, and the deficiencies are easily corrected.

Paul B

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