Finally finished one of the Accurail tri level auto rack cars. It is of impressive length (90') and height and can readily serve as a "clearance car" to check out tunnel and bridge heights and to collide with anything too close to trackside. Car like this looks much neater with a load. It takes 15 automobiles to fill the thing, 5 on each deck. The usual vehicle models down at the shop are beautiful little scale models going for $5 and up. Fifteen of those gets us up to $75 which is a little much. I have never found any children's toy autos in HO scale, the hot wheels cars are all S. I finally did find some low cost Bachmann plastic autos at a train show.
16 of them were only $6. The Bachmann autos are on the low side of cheap, but a couple of fixups makes them into more convincing cargo. I got a piece of heavy black construction paper at Walgreens and made floors for the autos. This prevents the rail car deck from showing thru the auto windshields. Just cut the paper to size and slip it under the axles of the autos. It darkens the auto interiors and makes the glazing look much better. With a fine brush, paint the hubs of the wheels to match the car body color. The Bachmann wheels/axles are molded out of solid black plastic which needs something to pick it out. Real automobiles were always shipped with the easily stolen things like hubcaps and cigarette lighters locked in the trunk, so body color is more appropriate than chrome. So, off the the club to check out the clearances...David Starr