See, the thing that bothers me the most with this is not so much the "put any paint scheme on them and ship it" mentality but rather they are not making any attempt to match the cars they have with what railroads they want to produce. As I previously pointed out, CP rail's Budd cars were based on the California Zephyr cars. Add to that, VIA frequently mixed smooth sided cars with the ex CP Rail cars in the 1980's before they started their HEP rebuild program. So why not take the "least inaccurate" smooth sided cars with the most accurate Zephyr cars to create a VIA set that can actually be passed off as something VIA rail may have actually ran?
It may have to do with the Japanese preference for matched/uniform looking train consists. They have mixed Budd and smooth side cars (El Cap, Cola etc.) or stuck a heavyweight in (BL), but they were painted the same and blended in. I have heard they sell a lot more trains to the Japanese market than to the North American market so they want something that will sell on the home front. Just speculating here.
Has anyone established that this E8 release may be a completely new body style?...'freight' pilot, dual headlight, Non-dynamic brake?.... IF this is the case, then the release is pretty interesting for me, all the discourse about releasing smoothside cars in various schemes regardless of prototypical accuracy notwithstanding. ~Bruce
"It may have to do with the Japanese preference for matched/uniform looking train consists." Good example of that is the Kato Super Chief set--Kato did not use any Budd equipment in the consist even though the Budd 10-6 sleeper they had produced years earlier in their corrugated side sets was practically identical to the Santa Fe prototype used on the Super Chief (and many other long distance ATSF passenger trains). I would not mind them re-running that car in Santa Fe (with that excellent Super Chief shiny paint) for a new Super Chief add-on set. Rick
Those were the Pine series cars...the KATO CB&Q cars were released as Santa Fe...real, real close to the Pine series sleepers (I acquired some from Russell not too long ago) the full skirting needs to be trimmed to represent a typical skirted or non skirted ATSF car, but apart from that and a small single window shape and placement, spot on. I too, would welcome another release in the newer paint-otherwise I have plans to strip and re=paint to match the Super Chief and El Capitan consists... ~Bruce
I modified this Kato Budd car. Full skirts were cut out to accommodate 41-CS-11 trucks with clasp brakes. The car was delivered in December of 1949 with out skirting between the trucks but Santa Fe added skirting to the car in early 1952. The trucks were updated to 41-CDO-11 with disk brakes in June of 1964. The Santa Fe only lettered these cars with Pullman on the far right side, regardless of which side of the car it was. The model has it on both sides.
Which would actually make things worse because the post HEP Canadian is all Budd cars pulled by F40PHs.
There could be something to Charlie's reasoning, In Japan over the last year or so Kato have been rerunning the old C11 and C58 steam locos, and then out of nowhere announce a completly new C57 pacific. The reruns of the old cars could be just to keep things ticking over while the guys at the factory are working on something that will really take us by surprise.
VIA locos should be single headlight, non-dynamic brake, passenger (waisted) pilot. The previous choices we have had were Kato (dynamic brake, but otherwise ok) or LifeLike (extra headlight, but otherwise ok). Kato has a non-dynamic, single headlight, freight pilot shell from the Broadway Limited E8s. Adrian
I wonder if these cars are new production from the old tooling, if so they've gotten good mileage out of it, or if they found a few boxes of undec body shells hidden away somewhere and decided to paint them up and do a few E8's to match.
+1 on the Twentieth Century Ltd... though I would be interested more in a new 4-6-4 Dreyfuss Hudson... or a 4-8-4 Niagara to pull it. In-so-far as the tooling being announced for the Via, Alaska, C&NW & IC sets... they are not likely to be new tooling... though... there may be some slight alterations. I can only hope that this re-run of old tooling is a precursor to new proto-correct sets and new motive power. As for the E8's announced... ***sigh***... they appear to be duel headlight with dynamic brake on the photo. I don't believe the Illinois Central E8's were equipped with dynamic brakes. I have a full consist of Intermountain/CCS Illinois Central passenger cars... and have the old LifeLike E8's. I really want to upgrade the motive power... and prefer it to be the Kato made E units. BLI/PCM has released an E6 in Illinois Central... but... not sure I want to spend $300+ on the two A units even though they are already DCC/Sound equipped. IF BLI/PCM had run them as Panama Limited scheme or City of Miami scheme... there would be no question I'd have bought them.
They pulled this same trick a few years ago with a re-run of the 4 car sets of UP cars. None of the cars on the two four car sets had any numbers or names. That was 4 or 5 years before the City of Los Angeles came out. So following that model, new prototype specific named trains are 4 or 5 years away.....
Kato web site says the Illinois Central E8A will have non-dynamic brakes, two headlights, a steam generator and a freight pilot (just like ATSF) and the accompanying illustration suggests this is the case. The E8B has the dynamic brake fan, however. Is the non-dynamic A/dynamic B combination prototypical for IC? Other roads? Rick
If you like it buy it. If you don't, then don't buy it. Voting with dollars will bring way more attention to Kato than complaining about it. Besides no one else has really stepped up and made complete sets. I know I'm buying the CNW and IC sets, because, hey they look cool. I'm mediocre modler at best, I want to see em go roundy round and call it a day. Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk
that's the problem though, voting with dollar will not make them make a new set. instead they'll say "oh this sells great let's make more!" hence why there's multiple CZ, Cola, and whatever else trains. would it hurt them to make a couple different none beaten to a bloody pulp trains, probably not time will only tell though.
Kind of hard to tell if this photo indicates the B unit didn't have a dynamic brake... since it could have been removed before this photo was taken.
