Great! Kato is making an East Coast train from the transition era! Now, how about a B&O Capitol Limited or light weight Columbian with some E-8s?
Thanks for posting this Russell. It does fill in a few blanks on the TCL. A 13 car consist will be nice. A lot of us were hoping for an ABA E7 consist, but beggars can't be choosers. At least we'll save a few bucks on the front end. Could you share with us where that announcement came from?
I notice that it is an all-first class car consist, as well. It did get coaches during the Second World War and by the late 1950s, the coaches were there to stay as other trains were discontinued. The E-7s did work the thing in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I guess that on the Water Level Route, they did not overheat. Kato did do NYC cars and E-8s in its first releases of the smoothsides and E-8s. Both were nicely done and some of those cars were not that far off from the cars NYC actually used, although the observation did not look anything like any NYC car. NYC actually did have LW RPOs and baggage cars. The E-units and the car sets (one six car and one four car) usually fetch good prices when any come up on FeePay. This is a welcome announcement for many. As NYC is a "first tier road", the choice does not surprise me. In addition, the Twentieth Century is well known. I will not buy one, but will be interested to see what it looks like. The early deliveries of the E-7s came in a "reverse" Two Tone Grey, although I would be surprised if Kato chose that one. If it did do that one, NYC modellers of the late 1940s would be overjoyed, as Atlas issued VO-1000s with 1940s numbers, MT did its NYC FTs in cat whiskers, so, you could actually have accurate paint schemes for that era with RTR equipment. You could fill out the roster with Hudsons and USRA light 2-8-2s. A good announcement, even though it will not affect my wallet.
Those "good prices" will likely become a thing of the past once these prototypical cars and locomotives are released.
I may have to get one although I really don't need one. I never rode on the NYC but did travel on one of the observation cars (Sandy Creek) when it was in service on the American Orient Express.
Many of the other cars in the AOE consist were ex-UP. If Kato wanted to produce a "representative", if not fully prototypically correct, version of the AOE, they could use this observation car (and some of the sleepers), plus cars from the COLA set (and possibly the superdome from the Hiawatha, although the AOE car was ex-GN) to offer an AOE trainset. http://www.trainweb.us/ultradomes/grandluxe.html
Would have preferred to see the 1938 train with a Dreyfuss Hudson on point... but it's still going to be a must-buy. The great rivals will be together at last! Now the Broadway and the 20thC can glare across the platform at each other. I'm also pretty excited to see Kato finally making E7s (too bad they didn't mention any B units though). Hopefully those end up wearing a few other roads' colors- although if they announced Pennsy E7s alongside the NYC release, I think my wallet might run away screaming in terror.
