This memo is to document our final actions necessary to get our two-car train of Shaker Heights Pullman cars to operate in a prototypical manner along with the extreme lack of professional customer service from their supplier, Imperial Hobby Productions (IHP), P.O. Box 487, Wynnewood, PA 19096!
The Southern California Traction Club originally intended to acquire a three-car train of Shaker Heights cars, all powered but running with one or two poles only. We had acquired two cars directly from IHP at the May 2009 East Penn Meet. These were the cars with the review published in the July 2009 Trolleyville Times. We had already navigated through the inferior resin floor provided with the kit by initially stiffened the warping floors but that too was insufficient so we had Custom Traxx make a pattern for the floor and eventually had Bowser cast some pewter floors for the car. The cars with the new pewter floors ran acceptably although the minimum radius is inhibited by the skirts and very little can be done about that without wheels closer to scale dimensions.
These cars were advertised with "...Clear flush-fitting window inserts...". Indeed, resin window inserts were supplied with both kits but when we started to assemble the kits, we found that they were anything but. They were filled with air bubbles. The bubbles were so numerous that they looked as if they were dusted with white paint. IHP was initially notified of our findings on July 8th and replacements were promised "...next week...". When no windows appeared, on August 20th another request was sent. This was followed by another promise of "...next week...", which again proved to be empty. On both September 13th and September 21st additional requests were made. One request was totally ignored and the other received a new promise, "... I am working on the windows and will be sending you some you will like...". Here we are in December 2009 and still have neither replacements nor has any excuse for the continued failure to live up to their obligations been offered.
By mid-October after the repeated requests to IHP for the windows, the SCTC decided that replacement windows would never arrive so they decided to salvage what they could from the project. These shells were far too good to be wasted. Both of these powered cars were equipped with a power buss so they can be operated in train with only one pole on the wire. One club member drilled out the cast power buss receptacle on both ends of both cars and replaced it with a 1/4" section of K&S Engineering brass 1/16" diameter tubing, with .014" thick walls, leaving a .034" diameter center. The tubing was electrically connected in both the front and rear of each car to the trolley pole. All we needed to do is fashion an inch long piece of black wire, strip both ends and soldered each end to a 1/4" length of 1/32" brass rod that fit snugly inside the tube and we were off and running. Both cars are now equipped with the new cast pewter floors made for this car by Custom Traxx replacing the original equipment resin floors which warped badly. These floors, part #125165, are now available to the traction modeler. Only the front windshields and rear windows provided with the kit the were installed in each car because the center posts were cast into the windows.
The lead car was not completely finished when the electrical tests were made. Shown in Figure 1 are the two cars on the Custom Traxx programming track. The first car does not have the windshield installed while the windshield in the trailing car, despite being full of air bubbles, was installed. Our power buss connection is obviously working as the headlight in the front car is illuminated. The power buss is shown in Figure 2. We will be learning how to consist these two almost immediately.
Figure 1 - SHRT PCCs 79 and 87
Figure 2 - Power Buss Connection between cars
After the satisfaction of getting the power connection to work as we wished, the trolley pole in the preceding photo disturbed us. Was the pole too long? Not really. But it did not look right. So the only other thing that should be checked is the location of the trolley pole base. We got out our informative reference the East Penn Traction Club book by Joseph Zen-Ruffinen and looked at the plans of the Shaker Heights 71-95 series PCC shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 - Zen-Ruffinen PCC Plan - Page 71
Guess what? The plan shows the actual location of the trolley pole base. When we compared that to the model as shown in Figure 2, we found that the shell had the suggested location of the trolley pole about two scale feet too far to the rear of the car. We had drilled the holes for the SCTC pivots in the suggested location so we would drill two more holes in the correct location and install two new SCTC1 pivots as shown in Figure 4. The original incorrect position of the pole base is located by the blue arrow while the correct pole base location is shown by the red arrow.
Figure 4 - Relocated Pole Base Pivots.
Figure 5 - After Trolley Pole Bases Were Relocated.
We will eventually remove the old SCTC-1 pivots and fill the holes! With kits, some things just are not apparent until the kit is assembled. This was one of them. Compare Figure 5 to Figure 2 to see what alerted us to these problems in the first place.
The cars full length skirts helped avoid the detection of this problem and another one. Notice the access panels in the skirts in the plan and their relation to the trucks. The Trolleyville evaluation missed the fact that the access on the left rear is mislocated about 18 inches too far to the rear as pointed out by the blue arrows in Figure 5 below. In the same photo, the dark yellow arrows point to the proper location for the truck access panels. While the left front is also slightly off center, the truck access panels on the right side (passenger side) seem to be correctly located. The wheels have had the Custom Traxx resilient wheel decals from set CT-995 applied.
Figure 5 - Mislocated truck access
Because of the narrow pole base housing, we elected to place 1-72 washers under the SCTC-1 pivots, raising the pole base slightly and avoiding the pole base contact with the sides of the housing that was reported in the Jonathan Werner review in the July 2009 Trolleyville Times. These are clearly visible in Figure 4. The club also thinned the inner edges of the sides with a Dremel tool to help eliminate the same problem. Despite the now five-month of grief attempting to get replacement windows, the club still desired to acquire a third car, now that most of the problems had been located and solved. John McWhirter ordered our third car on October 23rd only to see the following posting on October 25th on 'hotractionmodeling' by 'promodelmaker' (IHP):
"...Also, PLEASE NOTE that all orders placed from our web site in November and December of 2009 will not be processed until January and February of 2010. Please be aware of this if you plan to order from us during this period. Sorry for any inconvenience or delay, but it's necessary.
Thanks,
Mike Bartel
IHP
http://ihphobby.tripod.com
The Shaker Heights Pullman shells are quite nice but unfortunately supported by extremely substandard customer service. But we did manage to complete our two cars, without the promised windows. We also learned how to run them in MU (Consisting) and got them running. The first run is shown in the next photo!
This car was reviewed by one modeler, checked by another modeler and painted by a third. Yet this problem did not surface until assembly was completed. In the initial review in the July Trolleyville Times, we did find some errors and these did detract a little for the kit. But the kit itself would be a worthwhile value if the advertised "...Clear flush-fitting window inserts..." had been provided. The club swears that they will play an increasingly diligent game of "Where's Waldo" with future models, especially those from Imperial Hobby Productions! Once you find and correct all the errors early enough in the process, you can eventually get a fine model. This is one of those events where the statement "Nothing worthwhile comes easy" applies!!