Walthers has announced the released of their 7th train, the 1953 PRR Broadway Limited, as well as the revised/retool Santa Fe Super Chief.
There will be 9 unique cars for the Broadway Limited (although the diner and kitchen/dorm cars were mated together and acted as one car). Most likely Walther will tie this train in with their Life-Like Proto2000 E7 units; maybe a casual mention of the BLI GG-1s for those modeling east of Harrisburg PA.
Flashing across the desert floor the Super Chief rolls again in HO Scale - now with Walthers exclusive “stainless steel” finish, factory-installed grab irons and tinted windows - plus an all-new “Regal” 4-4-2 sleeper and matching PROTO 2000® Santa Fe 16 Class F3s! Reserve your Super Chief today - call 1-800-487-2467 to find a shop near you or visit walthers.com for more information.
That new “Super Chief” looks as though it will be the “excuse” they need to break the $100 per car line, all I see is a whole lot of the old cars showing up on the secondary market really cheap, a great deal for the rest of us to either acquire the train or add extra cars to our current fleet.
As for the Broadway Limited, I’d like to get that set, just haven’t decided if I want to give in to them or not. I’ve just gotten the NYC set and am currently getting the UP set but I keep seeing the price get higher and higher, then 3-4 months later the same cars show up in their sale flyer for half price.
That has a tendency to chap my ___ (fill in the blanks yourself)
We have no solid information about those details, but the lighted drumhead and markers seems to be the new trend so it is possible they will include those. Competition does make products better.
Did anyone else notice that the lights on the F unit are still wrong? The upper light needs a Mars/Red combination and the lower need a dual sealed headlight in a bigger housing. What they have pictured is just wrong and lazy on their part.
Now, if they didnt include the “later” ATSF F unit details and only used one headlight housing then it would have been ok. However, the addition of the side-of-the-nose grabs and nose lift rings, means that they come up short…again.
I checked the price for the pleasure dome and it is 74.95 list, and who pays list? I for one have the full train in brass and these actually look as good or better and cost less than two tanks for gas for my car. I can’t say that for the Coach Yard Cars. Seems like a bargain to me. I did purchase the full Super Chief in plastic and should have known they would run them someday with the stainless look . When I purchased the latest and greatest brass version of the Pleasure Dome and compared it closely to the new Waltherscars at that time, the plastic car won the correct detail award. The Coach Yard look great in the pictures, but the builder had ommitted all of the rivet detail on the dome.
For my money, I am happy they are bringing out the SF cars and the Broadway, but the Broadway represents a later date than the steam era I prefer so that one is a skip.
Thank you Walthers for continuing to bring us quality products.
The Santa Fe F units were delivered with a single headlight but were modified within months of the units working trains. The one Walthers has pictured is post 1960 when the FRA rule changed for the access and windshield types and a few other rules. I noticed the number of steps installed on the engineers side should be 5 not four like the model has and the small cover that opens on the right side of the headlight is missing. The Santa Fe decal band on the front is located too low also. I still believe some of these corrections will be made. The 34C is pictured in the Santa Fe Diesel book, which shows details like these really well in color.
Most models are fairly close to being correct but I will still use the Genesis F units since I model prior to the cut fuel sills and ladders and those general changes.
If you email them about the needed modification, they might respond. This one is probably is a mock up and might not represent the production model.
I to had the Super Chief in brass, a Challenger set as I remember, sure glad I dumped those “sleds” before the plastic versions came out, I’ll agree with you they’re a “bargain” now, but they’re pushing the prices up rapidly and as I say, the irritating part of it is that 3-4 months after they’ve all been delivered they’ll show up in their monthly sale flyer for half price. That and their rapid escalation of the prices of these things is what sticks in my gut.
For my money they’re making it a bit to obvious as to what they are doing.
We’re in the same boat–you on the Broadway, me on the City trains. I’ve collected all of the so-far available COSF passenger cars, only to find out that they’re of a later vintage than the train that would actually go with my BLI COSF E-6 A/B/B’s.
Oh well, too late now, LOL! I’ll just have to run the train when no real Historians are hanging around my garage. [:P]
But it would have been nice to have a relatively affordable 1940’s Broadway Limited, I think. That train always looked better behind steam, IMO.
I know the feeling and have been there many times. I am glad to see the quality of the new UP cars and have them all so far including a few extra coaches to use on excursion service just in case. My power for the City Train is seven of the Oriental E units that are correct for the train. I really like those snow shields on those units and two of the A units have the post 60 FRA ladders and one does not. That gives me a choice of pre 60 or post 60 era. I did not get the E6’s from BLI but they do look nice and you can always use your modelers license for one night now and then. Hey, we used to have a guy in the club at Burbank that ran a GG1 without the overheads, but always had questions for him!
The Broadway train that was announced by Walthers this week at the show is the 56 train and would have to be pu
It might be a wise move to wait and get some of these on sale later on. I have done that many times with the BLI products since they used to blow out models on major discounts fairly often. I ended up with one of the lionel Turbines on sale wilth sound for $179. It is still a bargain today now with the MTH version of the same tooling costing much more.
The first run of the Super Chief cars will be cheap from now on.
Notice the light issue. Clearly, the bottom housing is the same diameter as the Top one. On the Walthers model, they are using the standard EMD lower light housing…which is wrong, expecially if they are selling this as the most accurate model to date…
You will not find a picture of a ATSF F unit that will match the details they are using. Seems like Walthers is just being lazy.
When I said detail like these, I was referring to the items I called out that were incorrect. Sorry if I did not make that clear.
\They have some problems there for sure but this might be a pre-production model or mock up. I have so many Genesis, PCM, Stewarts, and some brass models that I will not need these anyway. The Santa Fe F units that are preserved are located at the CSRM that is close to my place. I measured the bottom headlight one day a few years ago and it was about 26" in diameter. Santa Fe shops fabricated all of the bottom headlights and orginally they had one large sealed beam in them but they were all modified in the fifties. The Mars light is interesting since some of the mars lights have the red on the top and I have pictures of the red on the bottom. I don’t believe they rotated but just make an arch type of movement. I don’t have an explanation for that variation.
If you are interested in these, you might start emailing them to correct some of the problems with this model. The four ladders and lack of the MU access panel is an obvious overlooked detail also. The MU lines down on the pilots were on all of the F units after 1960 era and the decal is too low on the front for the F3 or F7’s. The early FT’s did have the decal lower in front.
I think the Broadway Limited cars will look very nice, but for those ever-growing prices I would demand already installed interior lighting, and of course a lighted tail sign/drumhead logo on the observation car. Otherwise I will not buy them.
By the way I have some questions: Did the Broadway Limited keep it´s observation car till the very end in 1971? As this will be the 1956 version I´m asking myself if it still might have been possible that occasional steam (maybe K-4´s?) pulled that train? When was the end of the steam era on the PRR? And did the Baldwin Sharknoses also pull that train?
The K4’s ran on the line out of New Jersey to Atlantic City until 1957, but it is doubtful any ever pulled the Broadway after the E7’s took over. The E7’s bumped the T1’s from that train and that was the end of steam on the flag ship. There might have been a case of a K4 coming to the rescue of the E units for a short distance until the next division in the early fifities, but even that would have been a one only run. We had K4’s three years of so on the St. Louis main line after the T1’s were pulled, but they did not pull any of the name trains that I remember.
The good thing about model railroading is you can think up a way to pull the train and enjoy seeing two K4’s in front of the Broadway one last time.,
I’m having a case of severe nostalgia. My dad took our family on both the Super Chief and the Braodway Limited in the 1950’s while I was growing up near Chicago.
My first run Walthers Super Chief has been in its boxes all along pending eventual construction of my city with a Union Station. Now, I’m finally building my city, and I’m finding out a better version of the Super Chief will be released. I’m not sure if I’ll change to the newer release.
Regarding details on the ATSF locomotives, I wonder if these are pre-production models. The final version may be closer to looking like the protoype. The manufacturer has done well on some of their recent F units. Let’s wait and see.
The photos look like they’ve had the headlights “airbrushed”, or rather the digital equivalent. I suspect that the production models will have the correct headlights. At least, I hope so. then again, I already have an ABBABA set of Genesis F3’s, plus an ABBA set of F7’s in progress from Highliners shells, so I really don’t need these.
