I recieved a Kato Amtrak 5 car set today. I know it is not transition era (which I mostly model),but as a passenger train Fanzee I just had to have a current era Amtrak Train. The passenger cars are wonderfully done,the unique trucks on the Amfleet II cars are very free rolling, and manage to incorporate pickup wipers for lighting. The Viewliner sleepers look great even better that Con Cor's old tooling. They feature interriors easly visible thru the large windows,end detail has the two different types of end doors found on each end of the prototype cars. The baggage car appears to be nicely modified tooling of a Santa Fe car with the typical current flat side doors with a single small window.All of the cars have very short leingth couplers which for a change results in close coupling like Walthers passenger cars, the phase IV paint scheme on the locomotive and cars is my favorite Amquack (trak) scheme,better than the Acella inspired NE Direct scheme. The locomotive has not been changed over previous runs,that came with Superliner Cars from what I can tell. It is a nice model,has cab interrior, the headlights and ditchlights illuminate going forward, rear headlight in reverse. In test running this locomotive does run just a skoish faster then my two new Athearn F59 PH II commutter locomotives ,but not excessively so. I'am impressed again with what Kato has done,I can't wait for the City Of Los Angeles set. Nate Goodman (Nato).
