I don't think this has been posted yet. Hot off the Kato email servers: http://www.katousa.com/cgi-bin/dl/dl.pl?dl.mif,N-F7-Freight-GN-NP-Undec.pdf
Lets hope they will follow up with some prototype specific passenger trains to go with them. Well, the Great Northern anyway. Would love to see the North Coast Limited power and passenger cars. Someone was running a custom painted one on the NTRAK layout in Oklahoma City this last weekend. Really looked sharp.
That is a really nice photo! The photographer managed to capture both an as-delivered E7 paint scheme and a Great Dome Lounge in the same picture. IIRC, this is about as close as they would get, as the E7's were gone from the Empire Builder before the Great Dome Lounges arrived. And yes, I'll join the chorus one more time asking for a full KATO NCL. I would prefer to see that with F3's, since there wouldn't be a question of what color to paint the grills along the top of each side. That photo shows a good comparison of a unit with freshly painted grills and one that the stainless is starting to show through.
I saw this earlier today and am very hopeful that it is a sign Kato has not forgotten the Northern Pacific and will in fact consider doing the NCL soon. I'm sort of thinking that the response in sales for NP locomotives needs to be sufficient to convince them there is a market for the NP products. Not too sure how well their NP NW-2 sold, therefore, I would expect Kato would like to get a better handle of potential sales of these freight units for comparison. I would also expect the NCL with Loewy scheme F3's would do better than the regular NP freight F7 locos.
According to Kato's latest (3-month old) in-stock listing, the NP NW2's are still on hand, so draw your own conclusion about how well they have sold over the past ~3 years. http://www.katousa.com/cgi-bin/dl/dl.pl?dl.mif,Kato-StockListing.October2015.pdf
I figured as much... several e-tailers still have at least one of the original two numbers in stock... 3 years after release. There is another pending release of NP NW-2 (pre BN merger renumbered) too. Same paint scheme... different numbers. A common connection for a pending release of a passenger consist was thought to be linked to the road-names chosen for the NW-2. But that was not the case with those NP NW-2. Sent from my SM-G530T using Tapatalk
I'm not so sure that that will be an accurate indication of interest since any currently sold will be to those modelers specifically looking for those locomotives. In reality, a new Named Train, say the NCL, if pretty enough (and I do mean esthetically) will stir more interest even among those who do not specifically model NP. Only then will sales of the accompanying motive power skyrocket. There are plenty of us here, and outside these forums, that snap up these Named Trains even if they are outside of our modeling region, myself included. And of course we're buying the locos to go with them. I've got one of each of Katos' passenger sets except the recent CB&Q and Illinois Central offerings. I think the train has got to show up first before sales of related locos takes off.
Kato offered their "smoothside" passenger cars in 4 car Empire Builder sets several years ago - maybe they should have called it the "Empire Emulator"?
Those re-runs of previous non-prototypical (for the most part) tooling from the late 1990's/early 2000's were the precursor to the 'named trains' which began with the first California Zephyr set. Unfortunately... the 'close-enough for N scale' runs of passenger consists are bothersome to the purist who wants a prototypically correct consist. Since these announced F7's are freight locomotives... I would hope they are not going follow-up with one of those 'make-believe' re-runs of the old passenger consist tooling for these F7 locomotives. It would be a sad thing... and would probably be the death knell for a prototypical consist for either GN and NP. I'm fairly confident that there will eventually be correct GN Empire Builder and NP North Coast Limited named passenger trains announced by Kato.
Yep. Those were nice sets, especially the paint jobs, but as Kato migrated to prototypical releases I sold most of mine. I am encouraged that this announcement suggests that Kato recognizes the market for GN and NP. I don't currently own a single NP locomotive, but will likely buy the ABBA set of F7 units simply because they have such a nice paint scheme. Also, I don't care what the rest of you guys say, I WILL be the first one in line to buy the Kato NCL when it is announced. Just try to get ahead of me! ;-).
This will not happen. We have been spoiled by Kato with the prototypical sets to the point where they have to know that more of those "make believe" sets won't sell. The C&NW and IC sets were, I believe, an exception since those roads weren't known for unique "name trains" to the same degree that the more major roads were. I didn't buy either of those, although I was tempted simply because I am a big fan of passenger trains.
Maybe it's just you that doesn't know the names. The IC had one of the most famous named trains of all time and to not call the CNW a major road especially in regard to passenger trains, is ridiculous. Jason
Thanks for weighing in Jason..... We all know about the City of New Orleans, although I will challenge you to point out what cars, in any IC name consist, were particularly unique to the point that the "good enough" Kato offerings were insufficient. So, tell me, what C&NW "name train" begs for a Kato release? I'll throw you a bone. The Kate Shelley. Good luck with that one. A lone E7 with a couple of coaches. I didn't have to look that one up, as it ran through my home town twice a day when I was growing up. Can't we just get back to bashing the outstanding Kato E5 release???? Just ribbing you.....let's get back to feeling good about new Kato releases?!
Watch what you ask modelers to do. There has been a two part article in MRH on modeling the City of New Orleans, and even as a California guy, when I think of the C&NW passenger trains, I think of the 400, The City of Los Angeles and the City of San Francisco...
In the town where I grew up in central Wisconsin, the Flambeau 400 was the C&NW train that we rode to get to Chicago. I recently bought the Kato C&NW cars and one E8. I am happy with it as it is close to my childhood memories. I believe the train was all coach with no sleepers or observation but I run them anyway. Here are some old family photos at the depot about to board the train in early 1956, before they added the bi-level cars.
For C&NW the "400" trains immediately come into mind. Weren't the "City" trains were actually extensions of UP operations? Which were later dropped by C&NW, and switched to MILW?
Well the easiest IC car to point out would be the flexi-vans which were very common in the 60's named trains which is the era I'd be interested in. As for the CNW I'd like Kato to try the Twin Cities 400 with E7s, full skirts and diaphragms, correct cars with square windows and square end observation. Hopefully I'm not mixing too many era with that. LOL Jason
Did you mean the City of Miami? http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh-2013-07-jul/city-of-miami-p1 http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh-2013-08-aug/city-of-miami-p2
