"These were convenience products. If you had a fleet of AF cars to convert to scale, they were a big help. Are there a lot of people looking to convert whole fleets of AF cars today?
If you just tap the parts, screw them on and add trucks and couplers you STILL have a toy car riding on scale trucks. Replace all the molded on detail, build a new under frame, repaint and letter - now if might be a passable scale model. If you are capable of doing that, you don't need the Ace parts to save you 10 minutes of building up the bolster - especially if the resulting car will sit a foot too high (which the gondola and Flat car conversions do)." Back in the "Glory Days" when we [LVSG/DVSG] held our monthly meetings we all had "modeling kits." We would go to a home, sit down at a table and chop and grind everything tinplate off of a American Flyer Hopper or whatever rolling stock. This was done under the leadership of Frank Titman. I still have some of some of those conversions now and I'll tell you that these models are as nice a scale model conversion as possible, and still are. Yes, we're fortunate that S scale has grown like it has and now we can go buy rolling stock, all but ready to run, but don't put down ACE and the workings of good modelers. There is still a lot of their models running on our tracks. Fact is, I'm currently running a 30 some car hopper lash up and in it is ACE-AF conversions, Marx Conversions, SHS, others, and the train looks really neat! "S"incerely, Bill Fraley
