I just received the ad from BLI on the release of the next set of California Zepher cars.
Given the popularity of these cars I will opt for the full set. I saw these cars when they were first released a few years ago and being on vacation at the time decided I would order a set later as I did not want to carry the cars around with me for a week. I waited and a couple of weeks later they were out of most of the cars. So I decided I would wait until they ran another set. The cars I saw looked great and I never heard any negative comments about them.
I am curious why the 11 car set which consists of specific cars picked by BLI?
What about mixing a set from all of the cars offered?
OR is this due to the preordering in advance?
I wonder how the California Zephyr cars will compare to the Canadian cars I ordered from Rapido?
I can’t speak to BLI’s sets but the California Zephyr was originally delivered in 6 11-car sets from Budd and apportioned ownership to the three carriers based on route mileage (CB&Q, D&RGW and WP).
In 1952, Budd delivered extra CZ cars (7 sleepers and 1 dome-observation if my memory is correct). This allowed CB&Q to rotate CZ sleepers and an observation with the Aksarben Zephyr. The 1952 dome-obervation, Silver Lookout, had a slightly different floor plan than the other dome-observations, but was otherwise the same.
Don7 … I would think you could mix cars from different BLI production runs.
That sounds right. I’ve read that the CB&Q ordered extra Budd built cars, some of which were rotated into the CZ, but were CB&Q owned cars and not part of the bog standard 6 CZ train sets that were augmented with the 6/5 sleepers around 1951. A sharp eye will note there were occasional 10/6 sleepers which had fewer windows on the hallway side of the car - looks like three widely spaced windows rather than 3 paired. I once had a brass budd Kumata/Oriental Ltd HO CZ car that followed this window pattern - and there is a photo of one at the back of the CZ in one of my D&RGW books.
I am assuming they choose the specifics for a standard 11 car set more or less at random.
That is what I have done. Choose the names that I liked.
[qutoe]OR is this due to the preordering in advance?
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I think it was just for people who wanted to order a standard set without doing their own research. Notice that a standard set is NOT one of each kind of car like some other companies do.
I have California Zephyr cars from all the prior three runs. Even when the first ones had wheel gauge problems, I have NOT been disapointed. They are the best passenger cars I’ve ever purchased.