Why are they doing ANOTHER CZ? Didn't they flood the market with enough of them the first SEVERAL times around! Come on KATO pull your head out! I guess I better go start getting some glass belly buttons so some people can see when there head is buried you know where! I guess we wait AGAIN for a NCL, which I am beginning to believe that NO MFG will EVER prodcue one.
Two reasons why you can't get what you want. The cars you want are too unique. With little repaint possibilities. You have not sent Kato a check for one thousand units of the train you are interested in. You could have it made in brass. Then after you own your set Kato will make it for you for what one car cost. It worked for me. After I completed my El Capitan and bought Nippon Sharyo Gallery Bi-Level Cars. Kato produced them. Or you could organized request campaign. Until then we will have to listen to you complain. The check with Purchase Order works best, companies like making money.
Sorry, but by my logic the next train will be the "Flambeau 400" And as soon as I paint and decal my Green Hornets, they'll come out after that. That cool McGinnis paint scheme only ran on train layouts around Chicago. Those electric overhead lines only went so far. But you could try working on it. I'm still trying to get someone to make the Electroliner, any CTA "L" cars or proper CSL streetcars in N.
I hope Kato's next train is something lame and ugly. They've taken entirely too much money out of my wallet lately.
Where does it say fifth release of the Califonia Zephyr? All I see is new road numbers for some WP and D&RGW F-3's or did I miss something?
As already stated, a 5th release of the CZ won't stop Kato from announcing another all new train this year. The CZ is all tooled up and ready to go, getting the production line to pump out another run won't interfere with the R&D department working on their next major U.S. train.
I am still hoping and wishing for a NCL, I would buy one in a heartbeat, probally honstly actually pre-order it, and I usually don't pre order anything! I have talked with Kato a few times, the NCL coming up in conversation, the answer I got from them was they didn't have it in the near future, but not to give up hope, that it may come eventually. The thing with the NCL is it wouldn't take too much retooling. The F-3's are already produced, and for the later NCL the FP-7 really wouldn't take too much to tool up, alot of the passenger tooling they have now would either take no or little retooling to get corect cars, the only thing car I can think of that they would have to make 100% from scratch would be the big window observation. Heck they already make the slumbercoach! IIRC the NCL was pretty much all "off the shelf" designs from the manufactures. so reusing the tooling for other roads would be an option. Honstly, after FVM's Hiawatha, my money is on the Olympia Hiawatha, Pulled by the FM erie builts, they also pulled it with E units for a time period and I think mabey even F units, not sure about that thought. The coaches, the Skytop lounges could be used in sevral MILW schemes, and the CN in at least one scheme. The supre domes are the same way, for MILW sevral schemes, and at least one for the CN schemes, and IIRC Amtrak, Alaska RR(or tour railroad), C&NW, and VIA rail. I am sure their is others I just don't know about it. Not to mention the Pullman Superdome design from MILW was very simmular to the ones made for SF, it would be a easy one to re-use over and over again. I could also see them doing the Pre war Olympia Hiawatha pulled by the EP2 Bi-polars. they already have the corect trucks from some of their Japanese prorotype stuff, and I imagine they probally have something in that inventory that could work for the frame and drive, or be modifyed to fit and work under a Bi-polar shell. Although I don't think Kato has any Heavyweight cars tooled up, so that might not happen. Although, I think that the EP-2 bi-polars may have pulled the post war Olympia Hiawatha also, but I am not 100% on that. If they did pull the super dome/skytop Olympia Hiawatha with an EP-2, and Kato produced it, you can count me down for one!
No, they did not flood the market. IIRC, all of the previous releases sold out within months. The second release sold out so quickly that they followed with the third only a few months later. Last year's fourth release also sold out quickly. Tooling the proper CZ was one of Kato's best decisions ever. Besides the sets themselves, they've also generated significant sales of matching F, E and PA units to pull them. Speaking of which, I wonder if this will be the release that will be accompanied by correct Burlington E units. We can only hope.
I wouldn't mind the red stripes if they also offered the black stripes. I realize that there are more folks out there who remember seeing the red stripes, but I'm firmly in the camp that prefers the original look of the black stripes. Remember, some of that nose marking was intended to resemble the grills on the front of the original shovelnose units, and red just doesn't work for that. :tb-biggrin:
I just got a set of Kato CB&Q E units after, what, 10 years since they came out. Overall I think they look pretty good, even with the black stripes, but I wasn't around for when the Burlington operated, so the difference doesn't bother me. I'm not sure what train I'd like to see Kato make next...a Hiawatha with the skytop maybe, or a version of the 400. I wouldn't mind if they came out with a correct version of the Lark, but they'd have to bring back the wartime black GS-4s...two-tone gray and daylight just don't look good together for me. But really I just wished they'd sell these cars individually or even as 2 or 4 car sets, as opposed to only offering the all-or-nothing packages. It'd be much easier to buy one car a month for $25, rather than waiting for 10 months to save up the $250. It's just frustrating when have say $200 saved up, but then stuff comes up (paying for car repairs, higher utility bills in the winter) where you just can't save anything for awhile. So you're stuck with your money sitting in the bank, where otherwise you'd at least have 8 cars out of a 10 car train you could run. I just think it would be more flexible for their customers. Anywho, enough of my moaning.
I still think guessing what's coming next based on what tooling they already have or could alter is off base. The only cars in full named train releases since the CZ that haven't been completely new tooling are the coach and dome/coach in the COLA, the El Capitan even got a completely new baggage car from the Super Chief. In other words, it could be anything. I wouldn't mind seeing a steam era train with prototypically correct steam locomotive and heavyweights. OK I know MTL make heavyweights but they are generic pullman cars.
That's kinda why I brought up the Lark, they've already got the GS4 and the articulated cars, and they've done somewhat unprototypical Lark smoothside cars before. Anyway, maybe that's just because I think that a two-tone gray consist headed up by a wartime black GS4 would be a very gorgeous train. I'd like it better than the Daylight version, even. If I could still find the old Kato Lark cars, and could still find a reasonably price black GS4, I'd totally build an unprototypical version of it.
I'm just wondering what Kato will do after they run out of famous 'named' 1940'-1960 streamline trains. There are still quite a few models they can do... and perhaps they can do re-runs of the Morning Daylight, El Cap & Super Chief (and others) just as they've done with the CZ 'franchise'. I'm just happy the timing was perfect for me to be able to buy these CZ sets and others. A few years earlier... or a decade or two later... and I'd be too broke to buy complete sets. I can understand why several folks are asking for individual cars rather than the full $250.00 set. It would have been hard for me in the 1990s to scrape-up that kind of money with 3 pre-teen kids and all of the expenses I had.
The black stripes are the original paint scheme and are correct through the 50's and into the early sixties. The issue with the original Kato CB&Q E units is that they had dynamic brakes, and that is incorrect for the Q units. Kato now has the correct shell (passenger pilot w/o dynamics) from the latest PRR E units released with the Broadway Limited. That's why you'll hear requests periodically for "correct" Burlington E units. IIRC, the former Kato employee who is a Trainboard member once reported that Kato had tentative plans back around the time of the original E unit releases to follow with a second run with red stripes if the first release sold out quickly (which they didn't). In my case, I would rather have the first release with black stripes than a corrected release with the Chinese red stripes.
