You Can't Always Get What You Want ... But If You Try Sometimes ...

You might find, you get what you need.

With the recent release of the Austrains FS/BS/BSR passenger cars, the debate over the now familiar multi-pack selling method has once again poked its head up.

These cars come in three different packs, each with three cars, one FS/FS/BS set in Tuscan & Russet, one FS/FS/BS set in Indian red with dark roofs, and one FS/BS/BSR set with silver roofs. Not a bad way to offer them if you have to sell them in a three pack, but it still leaves a bit of inflexibility if you want a little of each style, but don't want to buy three packs which at the end of the day will set you back $900 (soon $990 with the upcoming price rise).

I found myself in this position at the Epping exhibition, primarily wanting two sets of FS/BS cars, but due to my modelling era, wanting a lone Tuscan & Russet car for the mix as most would have been repainted into the Indian Red by the early 60's. I also wanted a BSR, but then I'd have to pick the silver roofed cars, and would have one less car for making up the mail trains that don't use a BSR.

I had a bit of a think about it, and figured the most workable scenario in the end, would be to get a T&R set, and a dark roofed set. At worst I had a couple too many T&R coloured cars, but not knowing how long the sets would be available I didn't want to gamble on maybe getting another set at a later date when the bank balance had recovered from the exhibition!

I figured that anyone who only bought the T&R sets would most likely want all of them, however thought that there may be a few people who like me would want just a single T&R car in their lash up but would rather have the two Indian Red sets if three whole sets weren't in the budget..

The other thing was, looking at a typical mail train of the era, the FS/BS cars were often complimented by the 12-wheel TAM sleeping cars. Lima released these cars onto the market in the early 1980's, and although time has marched on, they are still the basis for a decent looking model once a few details are taken care of. Better wheels, full height roof vents, interior, couplers etc, nothing too high tech or particularly expensive at the end of the day.

The Lima cars are semi readily available on Ebay, but the prices vary somewhat, you've then got postage charges, not to mention no control over being outbid and having to pay crazy postage prices sometimes. There had to be a better solution to getting a couple of TAM's as well.

So it was over to the Aus_Model_Rail group, and up with a post on a simple solution to getting what I, and hopefully someone else wanted. Did anyone want to swap a T&R car for a Silver Roofed car, and a T&R car for a pair of TAM's? No money need exchange hands, just a simple barter among like minded modellers.

Within hours I had my answer. An offer to swap my T&R car for a Silver Roofed Indian Red car, and another offer for my other unwanted T&R car for two brand new in box TAM's. How easy was this. But it got better!

On e-mailing back and forth it seemed the person with the silver roofed cars had bought two sets of silver roofed cars, so also had two BSR's as well. I thought why not ask if he wanted to swap one of my dark roofed cars for a BSR, and to my relief he was happy to do so. He got rid of an extra BSR and I got one.

So in the end, after putting up a simple swapping offer on a forum, and without exchanging any money I ended up with:

1x Tuscan & Russet BS
1x Indian Red FS - Dark Roof
1x Indian Red BS - Dark Roof
1x Indian Red FS - Silver Roof
1x BSR Buffet Car
2x TAM Sleeping Cars

I dare say there are many many modellers out there who are in the same situation with these multi-packs, having more of something than they want, which in some cases could have stopped them getting something else they want due to limited finances.

So instead of just whinging about the multi-pack selling, speak up, get a simple message out there, I have this, would like to swap for that, and you might be very surprised how easy it can be to get what you want. This is the third time I've done such a swap, and each time has worked perfectly, so for me it's a no brainer.