Another Train we will "Never See in N"

[Nato]

           Walthers has just announced another HO passenger train, the B&O Capitol Limited, with quite a few all new cars. As a closet B&O Fanzee, yes I know I' am also a closet SPF It would be great to have this train in N. New cars include the "Low Height" Strata Dome coach used on the all coach Columbian, and the Budd "Low Height" dome sleeper (three cars obtained second hand from C&O). We can sort of model this train in N now if we have access to the old Rowa MRC later Con Cor cars. Sure that dome car has fluted sides not smooth, and we do have the blunt end observation car, however it would really be nice if Walthers did the train for us N Scaler's. Another one we won't  have along with the Twin Cities Hiawatha, Empire Builder and 20th Century Limited. Well at least KATO  did give us the Broadway, CZ , Pooper Chief, El Cap, and COLA , and lets not forget the Silver Streak. Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah. "Love the new Railwire format."       

[Ngineer]

Another one we won't  have along with the (...) Empire Builder (...)

I don't get why Kato doesn't produce the Empire Builder. They could sell it in it's original livery (green and orange), in Big Sky Blue and in BN green.

Some of the cars could even be painted in the SP&S paint scheme, in the GN green hockey stick scheme (great dome lounge, great dome coach) and even in Amtrak colours.

THAT should make the tooling profitable.

Javier

[Ike the BN Freak]

I don't get why Kato doesn't produce the Empire Builder. They could sell it in it's original livery (green and orange), in Big Sky Blue and in BN green.
Javier

A few of the cars are also correct for the BN Business car fleet, so there are a few more options.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

They won't even produce a Horizon/Comet II car even though they have the underframe and trucks already tooled AND that car was used by about a dozen different railroads.

[sirenwerks]

Kato's supposed penchant for western railroads should be smiling on the NP's NCL, GN's EB, and Milwaukee's Hiawatha.  Kato makes locos for all of these and would be a BFF to me if they'd produce a Little Joe.  Of course, Con Cor already has done most of the EB, even if some of it is in reverse.

[Bob Bufkin]

One thing I've learned over the years is never say never.  Never thought I'd see a Trainmaster (Atlas), never thoughts I'd see a complete Broadway Limited set (Kato), never a SW1500 (MT), never a S series Alco switcher and we now have 2 companies making them.

That said, the one Eastern steam engine Kato should do is the Reading T-1.  Just think of the different trains and paint schemes they wore over the years.  Kato would sell a ton of them to both east and west coast modelers. 

[jmlaboda]

While the modernized cars wouldn't fit for anything other than B&O (and the few RR Passenger Car coaches that carried full B&O paint without the B&O roadname but with "RRP" in the ends of the letterboard adjacent to the vestibules) I wouldn't count any train out.  Between folks who are able to create and produce beautiful resin castings and those who are talented at drawing the graphics needed to do Rapid Prototyping any train is now possible.

A lot of folks would never have believed that a Rock Island Electro-Motive Corp./St. Louis Car Co. "shorty" doodlebug (RI 9008 - 9014) would ever be made available in N-scale but I have an extremely nice resin model made by Zsolt Kemeny sitting about three feet away from my keyboard with plans for buying one of the earlier Rock Island-built shells once he has those ready, with a RI EMD AB6 also coming soon... locomotive models that no one would have believed just two years ago that such would be possible.  The resin that he used, Sika Biresin G27, looks and feels like styrene and the castings are absolutely beautiful.

I mention this ever so often... "Its a great time to be an N-scale modeler!!!" and I believe this to be true.  Just wait, watch and see!!!

[JoeW]

How about a Northern Pacific loewy green scheme F unit trio and matching pass cars, and or a B&O F7 trio with a trailing Colombian scheme pass set.  Seemed worth throwing into this wishful thinking of models we will "never see"  but as another friend here said never say never.

[nkalanaga]

For the NP, if they did the NCL, they would need Budd dome coaches.  They have the basic car, in CB&Q's California Zephyr sets, needing only new sides.  At that point they could also do the GN's Empire Builder, except for the full-length dome lounge.  That wasn't part of the original dome-equipped train, so could be left out, although GN fans (including me) would complain loudly.

Or they could do the Mainstreeter, which would use their Slumbercoach, already made in NP, and wouldn't need the dome cars.  Not as popular, certainly, but it would be a Loewy scheme NP passenger train. 

For those not familiar with the Mainstreeter, it may be of interest, as it was be a fairly short train, suitable for smaller layouts, but could be expanded with mail and express cars.  Until the loss of the mail contracts in the 60s baggage (storage mail) cars frequently outnumbered the passenger cars, and in the late 60s and first year of the BN, it usually had one or more TOFC flats when it stopped in Pasco.  Not as glamorous as the NCL, but a nice train.