I live 35 mins from OVR and they're a great store. I've known the family for years and it used to be a farming building in the middle of a rural area until they moved some years ago. Thanks for giving them a shout out. I'll have to look at my Exact Rail ones and pick up a few more Auroras. Excellent review!!
For drooping couplers, I discovered a nice little trick thats easier than styrene shimming. What I do is take a Kadee bronze centering spring and cut off the spring arms, I have good results using scissors for this. I usually leave the rear part on because it tends to warp the flat if you cut it off and generally it’s not in the way of anything. What you end up with is a nice and easy .005” shim. If these cars have “scale” boxes on them then you might have to trim the sides down though
Nice review Dan. The box cars look great. The coupling issue seems pretty bad but as long as it doesn't affect the cars run then that's the main thing. Looking forward to seeing how you fix them.
I think OVR prices are in $CAD. Great store, great car. We live in a golden age of modelling when or biggest complaint, other than the coupler is a small missing stencil.. Aurora is putting out some, while not perfect, really nice models.
HI Dan, Love your videos. Can u tell us what about the Exactrail cars make them Foobies? I have several of them and they are very nice and I will not be getting rid of them. They look just like the prototypes to me and I like their trucks and the Kadee scale couplers they come with. Thanks.
The ExactRail FBOX cars are fine, as far as I can see. There's a potential for foobies if they release the car with numbers that correspond to a Gunderson, Johnstown America or National Steel Car car but, as far as I can see, they haven't done that so far. Those other manufacturers designs are pretty similar, but the cars have different numbers of ribs on the sides and ends -- see my response to Scott Walters' comment for the gory detail. Exactrail have released some foobies using that bodyshell, though. They've used that Trinity bodyshell to represent some SRY cars made by other manufacturers, for example.
The model from Aurora is yellow orange. The prototype is a muted yellow and appears to be quite new. Did Aurora goof in this aspect. I like the faded yellow better.
:sigh: I wrote a long reply to this but it seems to have been deleted. Long story short, it's hard to tell exactly what colour things are from photographs/videos on computer screens, because the camera, the photo/video editing software and your own monitor settings can all affect the result. To me, the Aurora models do look a bit too vivid, compared to photos of the cars online when they were only a few months old (so presumably not faded, unless the paint was really bad).
By the way, in the shot at 14:30, the very orange colour of the model is definitely a lighting issue. In other parts of the video, you can see that the model looks much less orange.
they are actually molded on parts in yellow plastic... i contacted aurora 5 times regarding this question... personally i think for 60bucks this is a big no go... i stopped my order... if they get that right in future i am gonna order a bunch thats for sure... but for now EXACTRAIL is my way to go... also they have quiet a few problems with informations regarding their lcoomotives and answering customer questions... then there is the problem with the couplers... personally i am gonna wait for future runs and see if they get their stuff right... also i have not seen 1 single picture of the cars showing the doors in the OPEN position which aurora clearly announced back when they announced the car along with crisp painting.... i am very disappointed
First, it's an "Evolution Series" model, which sounds like it's the Awesome Series!!! but it's actually ExactRail's budget line, so the detail will be lower. Second, FBOX cars were built by four different manufacturers: National Steel Car, Johnstown America, Trinity and Gunderson. Each of them have different designs, which you can see in the door frames and he ribs on the sides and ends of the car. NSC: sixteen vertical ribs, with the ones that form the door frame significantly wider and extending farther down the car; seven equally spaced wide ribs on the car end, including a rib within the white-painted excess-height part. Johnstown America: twelve vertical ribs, with the second ones from the cars end slightly wider; a doorframe that's separate from the ribbing and goes around the sides and bottom of the door opening; six ribs on the end, with three closely spaced up to the handrail, and three wider spaced above. Trinity: fourteen vertical ribs, two of which are wider and serve as the door frame; seven narrow ribs on the ends, three closely spaced below the handrail and four evenly spaced from the handrail upwards. Gunderson: twelve vertical ribs, with the second ones in from the car ends much wider; distinct frame around three sides of the door; seven equally spaced narrow ribs on the end, with half of the top rib painted white. Just eyeballing it, the ExactRail model looks like a fairly accurate representation of the Trinity car, but it would be a foobie if they released it with road numbers corresponding to a car by another manufacturer. Conversely, Aurora would be making a foobie if they released their car with road numbers not corresponding to a Gunderson car. All Aurora's FBOXes have numbers in the 506400-506999 range which are, indeed, Gunderson cars. It's easy to misunderstand Aurora's foobie claim as "All previous FBOXes are foobies" but really, it just means "All previous _Gunderson_ FBOXes are foobies, because they're really NSC/Johnstown/Trinity cars."
@@scottwalters6031 It seems that the FBOX version of the car is fine, as it looks like they've only released it in road numbers that correspond to Trinity cars. They have released that car in other paint schemes, though: the SRY blue cars (series SRY 5450-5559) are foobies because the actual cars are NSC; the red SRC/Catalyst version seems legit. I'm not sure what other versions they've produced, as ExactRail think it's the 1990s so they've taken down their website while they make changes to it. Athearn, on the other hand, have released a total foobie of an FBOX 50-footer, in the old fashioned "waffle-side" with raised rectangular patches on the sides.
the seperate parts are molded yellow plastic... come on its 2023... 60bucks for a car that is not painted but has yellow molded parts on it... very disappointing. also i can not see the doors which according to AURORA can be opened up
