Walthers is advertising cars for the Wolverine, the Florida Special and the North Coast Limited. Anyone planning to purchasing any of these special trains?
http://walthers.richfx.com.edgesuite.net/presentation/media/May2011Flyer/
I was looking at that flyer. I asked the tech guy at W about minimum radii and he said 24 in reccommennded. Since my short-sighted planning put in Bachmn 22 inch he did not think it would work on 22 inch curves. What does anyone advise?
I have some Concor cars sticking up out of my garbage can and decided to get Walthers cars as we get what we pay for. Thanks.
More like R28 to get them to track reliably.
You might want to see if you can scrounge up old Bachmann pullmans from eBay. They are good with R18’s all day and night.
Regretably Bachmann isn’t making any more.
Trying not to be negative here, but why do you ask? Does this stuff interest you? Spend away, you don’t need anyone’s approval or permission.
If I where to list my rolling stock or loco roster, or my now very limited wish list, you would likely think “why would anyone want that stuff?”.
So to answer your question - No, first it’s outside the era and region I model, second, I don’t “collect” stuff that has no operational purpose in my layout concept/plan, third my interest in AMTRAK is -10, fourth, Walthers passenger cars are way too expensive considering they have some “defects” that are not acceptable to me, specificly diaphragms that do not touch and stay touching during operation.
Another thing I will never understand, why anyone would want to run 85’ passenger cars around 24" radius curves? I have 36" radius and larger, and I run mostly 72’ passenger cars for the better appearance and operation.
Still happily freelance modeling the early 50’s with DC control and no onboard sound.
Sheldon
When I saw the title of the thread, I became a bit excited…at first. I’m very glad that the Florida Special is getting attention, and although I’m an early Amtrak fan…the rainbow era doesn’t do that train justice.
Now that Walthers is willing to metalize or “plate” their model stainless steel Budds and Pullman Standard cars, I do hope that we will see trains such as The Florida Special and The Southern Crescent as they appeared before the Amtrak era (1960s, mostly de-skirted).
I am glad that the rainbow era is getting some recognition, but as has been pointed out by modelers on several forums (myself included) if Amtrak modelers are depicting the time period after 1973 ( just two years into the Rainbow era ) you need the SDP40F locomotive.
But to answer the question, I’m considering picking up a few of the rainbow era cars, particularly the ones that would be found on the NY-Florida trains (Champion, Florida Special, and Silver Star).
Oh, OK, I’m bummed. I thought this was like special cars to create those trains. All they have done here is cobble together cars that they already had/have in stock/production to put together Amtrak trains of those names.
I’m pretty certain that if one had been paying attention, these cars could have been had in the past few years for much less than the current “sale” price. For me I just (two weeks ago) got a full set (a real set with multiple coaches and sleepers) of the Amtrak plated Superliner cars for $29.99 each. Much less than the sales flyer price (page 14) of $64.98.
I always look for the deals in the flyers - in this case see page 21 bottom and lower right. Pullman heavyweight 6-3 Sleeper 19.98 and heavyweight Pullman 10-1-2 Sleeper for $18.98. I might buy a few of each of those.
True.A little suggestion to Walthers:While I’m not knocking such great trains as the Hiawatha;Broadway;20th Century and the like,living in Texas,we seem to get the short stick when it comes to models of name trains!!
I’d love to see the Sunset Limited;the Texas Special;Southern Belle/Flying Crow and the MP/T&P Texas Eagle!!
Now with a couple of exceptions,modeling the Texas Chief on the ATSF;KCS Flying Crow/Southern Belle and Rock Island Twin Star Rocket are fairly reasonable.
Nearly everybody and their dogs make a F7 in Warbonnet colors and streamline cars lettered for Santa Fe;Walthers and Rapido make smooth side cars lettered for KCS and Rock Island.
Now one of my pet peeves is that hardly any manufacturer makes MP equipment that’s not in Jenk’s Blue!!
I’d like to model the MP Palestine-Laredo line in honor of my wife who grew up alongside it in Buffalo.
Since it’ll be set in the '59-60 era,I’d prefer to have equipment in the Blue and White Scheme rather than Jenk’s Blue.
Oh well,MORE COWBELL!!
’
Please advise wher you saw the ad fo North Coast Limited.
Thanks.
??? The link for the ad is right there in the post. Just click it. When the graphic comes up flip a few pages. It is the Walthers May 2011 sales flyer. However if you read the thread, you would have seen it isn’t the Northern Pacific North Coast Limited, but the Amtrak train of that same name, complete with big sky blue equipment.
So far, Walthers does not have the full North Coast Limited such as the on in operation in the late 1950’s. Now, we can run only part of that train with Walthers cars.
Please forgive the rant…
Re: The Florida Special.
Just my opinion as a southeastern modeler that belongs to a couple of prototype forums.: If Walthers wants to strongly succeed with “The Florida Special” then it should produce the train with the same effort and fervor it did with the “Super Chief” and the upcoming “El Capitan” with detailing and metalizing (plating). A 1940s-60s era Florida Special would be more popular as the prototype train often ran 16-18 cars long and featured a beautiful mixture of Budd, Pullman Standard, and ACF stainless steel cars. With just a few additional cars, Walthers could easily produce “The Champion”, another very popular east coast train run by the ACL, FEC, and Pennsy ( just my opinion based on what I’ve been reading on prototype forums and talking with fellow southeastern road modelers).
IMHO, it’s very disappointing that Walthers is just going to use a smattering of painted cars to represent the Florida Special during the Amtrak Rainbow era. Even in the early 70s, the Special still featured Budd and PS ss units in its consist along with the “rainbow units”.
Forgive me, but from my, skewed view, it seems that Walthers is more interested in producing a plated “anything” that ran on the western side of the USA or whatever they could see outside of their windows. As a good friend of mine pointed out…Walthers is also missing out on the Pennsylvania RR modelers that are interested in plated NY to FL trains, since GG1s hauled them on the NEC and they were officially listed as Pennsylvania Railroad trains on northeastern time tables.