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 Posted - December 09 2008 : 1:32:44 PM
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Can anyone give me a brief history of Roundhouse - I know the old Loco kits are sought after & need tweaking to run.
Looking in Ebay there are quite a few wagons on offer - more than perhaps one would anticipate for a defunct brand [if it is indeed defunct], - is someone still producing Roundhouse today??
Any comments on quality, then & now??
Thanks
Tanked
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Posted - December 09 2008 : 1:41:11 PM
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hi TankedEngine roundhouse now belong to athearn i believe ken
http://www.roundhousetrains.com/
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Posted - December 09 2008 : 2:12:31 PM
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| Ken is right, the Roundhouse name lives on. In terms of 70-80's-era Roundhouse/MDC (in my personal opinion), the quality was comparable to the Athearn of the time. A disadvantage would be that assembly could sometimes be a bit more challenging, having to trim flash, do more glueing, etc. On the upside, they offered prototypes not offered by Athearn, and some models lent themselves to kitbashing. If memory serves, they were one of the first mass-producers to make boxcars in a modern style without roofwalks.
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Posted - December 09 2008 : 5:53:17 PM
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I bought an older Roundhouse kit a while back. It was fairly easy to assemble, but like Adams mentioned there is a bit more flash then with say an Athearn kit.
However, the trucks were pretty good, they were the modern style and rolled really, really well.
    
- Matt -
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Posted - December 09 2008 : 7:59:29 PM
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Horizon Hobby acquired Roundhouse soon after their purchase of Athearn. The product lines were merged under the Athearn banner for a short time, then the Roundhouse name was resurrected as the brand for "old time" (pre-war) models formerly sold by both, leaving Athearn as the branding for more modern kits (including the bulk of former Roundhouse tooling).
The Roundhouse name apparently goes back almost as far as Athearn. I don't know much about the older kits but I have seen them, they are crasftsman-style cast-metal kits which appear to be quite nice for their time.
In later years (mid 70's on I would surmise) Roundhouse kits were very much like Athearn blue-box, with a few key shortcomings or quirks. The chassis were a little flimsier, and the carbody stirrups were cast on the chassis and not the body - meaning they would have to be painted. Draft gear boxes were especially aggravating: when screwed securely they were often too tight to allow the coupler to operate properly, but the slightest loosening of the screw would make them fall apart.  And the weights were designed to be fastened with press-fit plastic washers and other unusual means which were not as durable or secure as Athearn's use of screws.
Another quirk of Roundhouse vs. Athearn kits was that, for the longest time, an assembled Roundhouse kit of a typical 50'+ car with couplers installed would not fit back in the box!
But they offered a great deal of modern freight cars and paint jobs, much moreso than what Athearn had in the 80's-90's. And they were a comparable value once you got used to their quirks.
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