New O Gauge From Menards: Military Car With Deuce and a Half

Menards is really stepping up their game when it comes to O Gauge rail cars and buildings this year.  In addition to producing a bunch of 'weathered' boxcars, they've come out with a few pretty interesting additions to their rolling stock collection.

The first of which is this Military Long Flatcar with a "Deuce and a Half".  From the Menards' product listing comes this detail:

Honor our armed services from the past and present with this brand new O gauge military flatcar featuring a longer, simulated wood platform that measures 10.5" long. It is decorated in military green and easily couples with most O scale train cars. The Deuce and a Half transport truck and fuel transporter are intricately detailed and constructed of resin. This is a limited edition military train car that is recommended for O-36 and larger curves.

They've priced it at $39.99 which is a fair price for a car with this amount of detail.  I've bought a few cars from Menards in the past and I've liked them for the most part.  The couplers aren't always perfect, but the cars are serviceable and add to the mix on our layout.

But my biggest gripe with the cars that Menards sells is the packaging  You can see their typical packaging in this post I put up last year.  They mount the cars to a cardboard bottom and then wrap a plastic bubble around each of them.  They're useless once you take the car out of them.  

For most people, that might not be a problem, but for me and the girls, it just isn't great.  We put our train set out once a year - at Christmastime.  Have to think that's what A LOT of train hobbyists do, too, right?  That means that each November, we unpack all of our train stuff and that usually means a bunch of bright orange Lionel boxes.  Each of the Lionel cars store nicely in their boxes.  When we're done in January, I pack up the cars/track/etc for a long 10 month sleep in our basement.  

These Menards cars don't have boxes that they can go back in to, so I just kind of pile them up and wrap them in various materials like newspaper to protect them from each other.  

I'd gladly pay a few more bucks from Menards for these cars if they came in proper boxes.  So...whadya say Menards guys up in Wisconsin?  What about some boxes for your cars?