What excites me the most here is another opportunity to obtain prototypical and/or close to prototypical sleepers from "foreign roads". Just like the upcoming Walther 10-6 sleeper (or is it a 10-5 ?) this allows me to add some single car sleepers to my "Pullman" collection. ( I just call it the "Pullman" collection, by 1973 Pullman was a historical reference; not an actual slepping car company but you get the drift !)
Every summer, even into the 1970's you'd see a colourful collection of ex Pullman and other road specific slepers on the "garden tracks" in Banff, Jasper and other mountain stations. These were excursion cars that were left as "rail hotels" for their pasengers vsiting the mountains of Alberta and B.C. There are pictures of PRR sleepers, coupled to NYC and NP sleepers just sitting on the garden tracks in Banff as late as 1973 that I've seen.
I am slowly doing a collection of these sleepers to add to my CN and CP transcontinental collections and to "decorate" a future station scene that I have been planning in my mind for many years.
With Walthers having announced their sleeper (accurate, almost accurate I don't know) the Intermountain 18 and 14 roomette sleepers already out and more (well, MAYBE more to come) and now the Rapido announcements there are truely a wide range of sleepers RTR and "ready to bash" soon to be available.
Accurate sleepers are the hardest thing in passenger op's as far as I am concerned. Even if you can work with brass or styrene car side you still have a challenge getting the correct cars so any additions to the fleet are appreciated by this modeler.
