News Flash: You heard it here first, USA Trains has a new 60ft modern box car that it will soon be releasing. It will be based upon a 1:29 scale ratio Ultimate series. It will have spinining wheel journals, diecast trucks with metal wheels and a real cushioned coupler. It will be kadee coupler 830 adapable. It will be a whopping 22.5 inches long so if you have less than a 8ft diameter curves this will not work for you. This new box car will be available in both a single and double door version. A Bi-Level enclosed auto carrier is also on the drawing board which feature opening ends, see thru side panels, diecast trucks with spinning wheel journals, diecast couplers and is Kadee 830 coupler adaptable. This one will be 36 3/4 inches long. Thi one is also the Ultimate series. USA Trains announces thier own transformer but unfortunately it's like Aristocrafts first walk around transformer. It's called the "Train Power 10" and features a 10 amp power supply with a corded controller. It features memory control. momentum control, braking control, direction control, and variable speed control. It also has a press and lock track connector Remember this is still on the drawing board due to be released, but no release date has been announced yet. USA Trains just gave us something to look forward to, yeah.
Ok I said I'm done with buying new trains, but I must say I'm definately getting at least 3 of those big 60ft box cars to be pulled by my SD70-MAC locomotives. The Bi-level auto carries are way too big for my indoor layout just like articulated 5 car intermodal cars
Yeah! These are to big for my indoor layout although my time period would find them on the 1:1 layout. Open auto rack though. I just want all you people to buy them up as fast as you can so USAT is encouraged to continue with the 'modern' stuff.
They'll be too big to run on my layout, but like my exceptions for the Intermodals, I will be picking up a set of the BN Auto carriers. Living in the suburbs of Chicago and on the BN line that ran into the Chicago Hub via the Chicago-Aurore line, I saw them on the fly constantly. usually they were coming from Normal, Illinois (Then Joint Mitsubishi-Chrysler) with full loads. Very remembering of my childhood. So despite the inability to run them, I can display them and keep a memory alive, if just for sentimental reasons.
DragonFyreGT, that was a cool short story. I remember trains in my area from my childhood, road names such as "Reading" which there were a ton of those covered hoppers with that road name around and then "Central Railroad of New Jersey" in which there were a ton of those with that road name on cylinder hopper cars and the image of the statue of liberty is still imprinted in my memory from those days. I see Central Railraod of New Jersey trains for sale once in a while on ebay but never thought of buying any just for display purposes, that concept idea is kinda cool. I not sure if I can run the USA Trains 60ft box car now, although it would physically go around my 8ft curves beacuse it isn't any longer than my USA SD-70MAC locomotives, the problem lies in that USA Trains is actually designing these to be standard body mounted couplers with no truck mounted couplers for a option like they normally do, that leaves these 60ft box cars for someone who has at least 10ft diameter or larger curves.
