So it's been over 10 years when I first took a look at S scale. Never had any interest in Flyer, Marx, whatever. I had issues of S Gaugian I think it was called, and S/Sn3 Modeler. Both now defunct I think sadly. I got the impressiom S scalers were absolute sticklers for detail and dimension. If a particular car rode a scale inch too low (admittedly an unnecessary discrepancy, .015". Or did I just pick up some bad habits???). Now I see ample talk of MTH and other make equipment. Admittedly Lionel, Williams, MTH has come a considerable way in the direction of prototypical fidelity. But, and I also have an interest in 1:48, I look at Bachmann/Williams, MTH diesels and say no way. Not interested. To each his own. But a company like Atlas makes models that IMO are head and shoulders above that other stuff.

?But am I missing something? Are MTH S models for instance plenty good enough for the discriminating modeler? Not many shops around here (Ocean county NJ) that even sell the stuff. Seems éverything is r/c and Warhammer. Can't get a close up look.

Let me repjrase the question this way. If you buy an AM, SHS, whatever brand, and it specifically says "hi-rail" on the box. What seems clear to me is the wheelsets and couplers have to be replaced. Anything else? Are hi-rail cars offered by American models and whoever else over the last 40 years say simply their scale cars with hi-rail wheels and couplers? Are the tricks themselves essentially scale?

Hi Hans,

Sometimes doing "generic" searches will not yield satisfactory results. It might be helpful if you really narrow-down your search to a specific model. Since you are looking for cars from specific years, I would suggest looking at this listing on the NASG web site:



You can then pick a year, select a model make, and then see which manufacturer created that car. Where available, I have listed at least one of the manufacturer's model IDs (number, PLU, SKU, etc.), so those can be helpful when doing searches.

So, instead of searching for "1950s cars" and not finding much, you can search for, for example, "Racing Champions 1951 Chevrolet Corvair RC004", and then get a listing of companies that might still have that model in their inventory.

Use the NASG web site to find out what is, or was, available, and then do your searches using that specific information.

You may also want to use a generic search engine, such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yandex, etc. to do your searches, rather than doing a search specifically on the eBay's site only. These generic search engines will still list eBay entries, but they will also list manufacturers' web sites (some do sell directly) and/or other vendor web sites that sell diecast vehicles. In other words, instead of limiting your search to just eBay, now you can search the entire Internet for the model that you are interested in, and you will likely have better results.

I hope this helps,
- Peter.

On 07/06/2024 04:59 PM, Hans von Draminski via wrote:

Hello to all. When I watch videos about S scale layouts I see some beautiful model cars crowding the streets. A search in the bay will get me not that many results when looking for classics of the 1950ies and 60ies. I was scanning the portfolios of Greenlight and Johnny Lightning but it seems there are much more Muscle Cars from the Seventies then Oldies from the Golden Era after WW II. Am I missing something? Or am I just too late and a lot of what I look for is just out of print yet?
The last car I got was a Mercury from the early Fifties in Canary Yellow, by the way...

Greetings from the heart of Football Sadness, Hans

-- 
Peter Vanvliet (info@...)
owner, Fourth Ray Software
Houston, Texas

 (personal web site)