Folks,
I attended the Hobby show in Rosemont today. I saw many new and interesting
things that are coming. A few things of note:
I saw the Stewart VO1000's painted in the CB&Q early Blackbird scheme (yellow
and red sill stripe, not diagonal white). It looks outstanding and ran very
smoothly - . The drive is by Ajin). He is only painting the squared walkway
sheetmetal for Q (he said he has never seen a curved one for the Q - though I
have many pictures of them this way). You can build it with one stack, 4
small stacks, or four large stacks. This model will be special for those of
us who have been waiting years for this!
I saw the test shot on the Branchline REA 6100 series welded reefers. These
500 cars were built in 1947 and were used extensively for produce and dry
express goods as well. Branchline will be doing these cars in 5 paint
schemes (including the ACL purple and silver!) The test shot I saw was
outstanding. I will be selling my brass Challenger models and waiting for
these. They say that there are some corrections and are hoping for early
next year.
Also from Branchline is the news that they are going full steam ahead on the
8-1-2, the 10-1-2, and the Pullman coach cars they have been advertised. It
has gone slowly to this point, and there were no test shots to see. Of
particular interest to me was they will then do a 12-1 air conditioned
sleeper and then another 3 or 4 cars "that they are not at liberty to
disclose". Sure hope one of them is a common baggage car!
I saw Overland's pilot models of the Bi-Levels and power cars. They are
basically a re-run of the earlier models with some tweaking and interiors.
(buy 'em by the sack! - Oh, wait - that's White Castle)
Railway Classics (formerly Shoreham Shops) had both the green and the silver
Havelock baggage car with the shadow striping on display. After the long
wait, these cars will be great.
Fred Hill said that Coach Yard will definately be doing the CB&Q, D&RGW, and
WP's Exposition Flyer in brass. It's a matter of picking which types of cars
to include (as it was a real dog's breakfast from a day-to-day consist, as I
am told)
All in all, a good day!
Rich Gortowski
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