Hi Everyone! Today we've announced 24 unique road numbers in the Tropicana paint scheme on our 64' Modern Reefer. Now you can model the iconic juice train, or other groups of Tropicana cars as they travel across the continent. Order your train before March 15th to ensure delivery. See additional information at: www.blmamodels.com/blog
Stand-in? I just got my announcement in the mail and looked over the BLMA site. Question: what the heck is a "stand-in" model? Does this mean the car is a close match, but not of an actual prototype? Craig provides some nice items to keep us in hog heaven, but with an MSRP of $26.95 it's a bit stiff IMHO.
That's exactly it. BLMA's cars look a lot like the Tropicana cars but there are differences, most notably length and height. Here are a couple picutre links that have been posted and you can see the differences. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1118362 http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1048309 This is why Craig's ad features the big "Foob-a-licious" wording. It's close to prototype but not exact and not as close as his usual models. John H. Reinhardt
Have you seen the MSRP on some of Exactrail's new HO stuff? Their Mangor 4750 Hopper is sitting at $55.95, even the discounted price of $46.95 is enough to make you choke a bit... Craig's are a steal and the street price will be closer to $22, which I'd gladly pay for the level of detail that these cars feature... Brian
Keep in mind that a large amount of cars made by other manufacturers in the past and even today are foobie's or "stand ins" as they are just close enough to the prototype. At least BLMA discloses this information in their announcement.
As Craig's cars are udually accurate models, I wonder why these are 'stand ins'? Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
Probably because they already make the car and are capitalizing on their tooling investment rather then spend a ton of money to tool a new car that is only used by Tropicana. I bet this car will sell just as well even being a stand in as it would if it was 100% correct.
Ah! Did not realise Craig had done similar cars previously. I have been too long out of N scale, I guess Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
Can any rivet counters among us point ut the differences between the Trinity 64' reefer BLMA makes and the actual Tropicana car?
I'm no rivet counter, but the biggest difference is in the height between the TIPX, and ARMN reefers... pretty easy to spot that in these links. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1048309 http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1118362 Brian
Craig, make the right car!!! Cryotrans, BNSF, ARMN, Tropicana, all have the bigger cars, most recently ARMN 17--- numbers! And of cuorse Im sure there are minor differences between all of these 72' cars.
My wife, who picks up the mail, was very concerned and stunned to find out I was on a mailing list for "Tropicana Reefer" with the all-color postcard. "You care to explain this???". But since I actually have told her about BLMA... and have even shown her the 'creative' side of your advertising, she calmed back down. I had similar problems as a teenager with my mother, who was very concerned that I was discussing reefers and hi-cubes, overheard me on a phone call with a railroading friend, and sincerely suggested I seek drug counciling. Craig, I don't mind the ads, but next time put a PICTURE OF THE PRODUCT on them, it really does look like Tropicana has a whole new product line going, probably at least legal in Colorado and California, not so much in conservative PA.
