I just received a notice from Walthers regarding the re-release of the GN Empire Builder.
Walthers is releasing the train in its original orange and green, as well as a Simplified orange and green and in addition the train is also being released in the Big Sky Blue scheme.
Walthers certainly has been busy with Name trains in the last couple of years.
I already have a couple of Walthers Name trains as well as BLI’s Zephyr and Rapido’s Canadian.
My layout is the transition period 1950’s, so I can run both early first generation diesel and steam.
My roster is more or less full now, so I do not see myself buying any more name trains in the future.
How many members of this forum expect to be buying any of Walthers Name trains in the future?
On a side note regarding Name trains, why would Walthers release a whole series of passenger cars, such as Canadian Pacifics Budd cars with the Maroon stripe, and yet not release a set of their EMD F series engines to match? Is it because being generic it would not pass as a Name train?
It depends on what name trains they might offer. I have a full 20th Century Limited, with additional cars, and two full Broadway Limiteds, plus additional sleeping cars.
I have little interest in Western trains, no matter how good they look.
If Walthers was to offer the B&O Capitol Limited, or one of the SAL/ACL/SCL Florida trains or the Southerns Crescent, Southerner, or Southern Crescent, I would definitely be interested.
I won’t buy another name train unless all of the desired cars and locomotives are available all at once. Several years ago I purchased several of the Northern Pacific North Coast Limited cars in the Loewy paint scheme with the intent of having a full '50’s era passenger train. Before all of the relevant cars were available they discontinured production of the final cars. The most glaring omission is the tail car. Still upsets me every time I think of it.
I agree with skagitrailbird. Put out the entire train at one time, not piecemeal over a 12-month period.
The trouble with name trains is that they seem to be limited to the biggest road names and ignore the lesser ones.
I model Dearborn Station where the Super Chief and El Capitan arrived and departed but so did name trains from GTW and Wabash and Erie and C&EI and Monon. Where are those name trains on Walthers production schedule?
You could always research to find the cars which are closest to what you want, then modify and paint them and so build the name train you really want, if it isn’t available commercially.
Not to be a wise-acre, but that’s called modeling.
Mark, I couldn’t agree more and, in fact, I have already done that with commercially available locos and passenger cars for each of those five other roads. But, it sure would be nice if Walthers or Rapido or whomever would produce name trains for those lesser roads and with true prototype cars - - - - but, of course, they won’t.
Rich I feel your pain, but in the scale below you. For some reason the major name trains seem to be limited to a couple railroads. Union pacific mostly(in N), myself and any other N scalers have been bugging Kato release the NP north coast limited and re release the great northern empire builder. I’ll admit I got lucky because CCS decided to make 4 SP&S coaches.
I get the sense that Walthers’ name trains must not be selling that well. Rerunning the Empire Builder must have been much cheaper than doing a whole new train and they have also been effectively rerunning much of their Santa Fe stuff. One thing I wish they had done was offer a few more cars to make the name trains more flexible (as they did with UP Cities). For example, the Twin Cities Hiawatha could have been converted into an Olympian Hiawatha with the addition of a Baggage Dormitory, 10-6 sleeper and 14 section sleeper. With an 8-6-4 you could make a bunch of other Milwaukee trains as well. I think this would have helped sales at modest added expense.
Maybe they could just pick a modern name train, so we could get heritage baggage cars and viewliners without having to sacrifice a chicken or some other ritual on the winter solstice, like we have to now.
I bought some of the original GN undec cars and painted them for Amtrak (they did some of the same cars later) and I thought they were really cool especially the great domes. So its a no-brainer that I ordered a new Sky Blue set and pair of Genesis SDP45’s. They are missing a baggage car and one sleeper from the original run. That might be my last “name train” unless they do ICG Panama or Seaboard with a Sun Lounge. NCL I would only need Leg Rest Coaches to have 2 sets.
PS I painted one of the undec GN Observation cars in Leowy.
Walthers don’t make an FP7 or FP9 which were the types used on both the Canadian and Super Continental. Rapido do…
You could always buy Rapido locomotives to run with Walthers cars…
The Walthers “Canadian” cars are generic, as were most of the Walthers Budd and PS cars prior to the original Super Chief set. There was a thread here comparing them. Many cars weren’t bad equivalents but some specific CPR cars were just not available from Walthers.
I bought the three basic original (painted) Super Chief cars from Walthers (500, 600 and observation) but now I can’t even get matching 4-4-2s and 10-6s to build up the set. I do have a pre Walthers PA1/PB1 set, though…
skagitrailbird & richhotrain,
Put out the whole train at once? Rapido did that, but then they also asked for a down payment before the train came out. Sorry, but I would prefer that the cars come out over time because there’s a better chance I could buy it all vs. coming up with $1500 all at once. It also means that individual cars are available for modelers that might not want to buy a whole train just to get one car. For example, the NH had 5 ex-ATSF RPO’s in the late 1960’s that they used on one of the last mail routes in the USA (Boston to NY). But the NH was so broke, they never repainted them. These same RPO’s had been used on the Super Chief, and were included in the Walthers set.
Walthers has been releasing entire train sets for over 10 years, and they’ve never stopped production of the entire train set. After a decade of performance, don’t you think it’s earned them any kind of good reputation?
WRT ignoring lessor railroads… Last I checked, Walthers was in this to make money. What is going to make them more money? ATSF or Monon? PRR or Wabash? NYC or GTW?
If it’s such a good idea doing these lessor roads, have someone do it. Rapido and other companies would gladly take on an investor in all new tooling and run the cars. You’d take all the risk, and get whatever rewards come your way…after you pay them off. I know a guy who almost did this with passenger cars. He had all the plans and had a contract made up. It’s too bad he backed out, but it almost happened. And heck, now that I think of it, that’s how Centralia Car Shops (which is actually Des Plaines Hobbies) gets things done with InterMountain.
M636C,
Actually, the Walthers Canadian cars are not truly “generic” (think old Con-Cor), they are specific prototype-based cars. They are just painted in the wrong colors (like CP). [:)]