BACH MAN, Are Cass Scenic RR open sided excursion cars REALLY on the way?

[mattyg1306]

While doing some Christmas "wish-listing", I found on another site a listing for "Bachmann Open Sided Excursion Car w/Seat Cass Scenic HO".  The item is up for pre-order, and is said to have an arrival date of Early December, which I guess means it should be available any day now.  To confirm this, I did a google search and found similar listings on two other sites.  Since none of them include the usually reliable walthers.com nor the official Bachmann site, I was wondering if this is for real or if someone got the wrong information by mistake.  I also saw the Jackson and Sharp excursion cars which are already out, and hope to find those under my tree  .  The Jackson/Sharp cars are kind of similar looking to Cass cars (although not really...they have open sides similar to old fashioned trolley cars and the like), and I thought someone might have gotten confused and listed one of them as Cass Scenic when they really aren't.  Does anyone know anything about this?  If this is true, it would REALLY make my holiday (  )as I have always wanted to have Cass Scenic RR tourist cars to go with my Shays.  (Even if it is delayed or something, a simple picture of what they will look like would be nice!).

PLEASE HELP, BACH MAN!   

[pdlethbridge]

is this what your looking for?
http://cgi.ebay.com/BACHMANN-HO-OPEN-SIDED-EXCURSION-CAR-TRAIN-BURGUN-19347_W0QQitemZ350127892745QQihZ022QQcategoryZ19132QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

[mattyg1306]

No, but that is actually where I started...Omni Models (as in the eBay listing) is the company that has the following listing for a Cass Scenic car (as described in previous post):

http://www3.omnimodels.com/cgi-bin/woi0001p?&I=BACU7433&P=7&I

[the Bach-man]

Dear Matty,
Not as far as I know.
Sorry!
the Bach-man

[Hamish K]

If I remember correctly the HO excursion cars were originally announced quite some time ago and included Cass Scenic Railraod among others.  However the cars were delayed and then appeared as the Jackson and Sharpe cars.  I don't know what caused Bachmann to change the cars they were to produce. Some retailers appear to have failed to change their website listings to reflect the change in the excursion cars actually produced compared to those originally announced.

Hamish

[mattyg1306]

Oh well, I am just ecstatic  to hear that there is at least some sort of rolling stock option for those of us wanting to model a tourist railroad operation even if it isn't a perfect prototype!!!  The strange thing about these cars is that I really can't find anything to say that Jackson/Sharp ever really produced a car that looks like that...I mean maybe they did, but it must not be documented that well... Perhaps Bachmann decided to combine a couple ideas of prototypes into one and that is the result?!  Or perhaps they started to design cars similar to several tourist lines and decided it was just too costly to make several different types so they decided on one generic design?.  It really looks like something that would either be on a trolley line or maybe its similar to one of the earliest passenger cars ca. 1840s.  Anyway, enough with the speculation...as I said, I am just pleased that there is something to go with my HO tourist operation that isn't homemade (I actually built both a "first generation" style Cass Scenic RR open car and one "closed" car on the ACF log cars offered by Bachmann, and I have to say, I think they look great considering they were made out of household items  !).  Now I can put those on display, and use the Jackson/Sharp cars for everyday operation.

On an interesting side note, I think I remember making a suggestion that they should make a tourist car on this board a little over a year ago when asking why they stopped making the prototype Cass Scenic RR Shay #5 but continued offering others.  Who knows, maybe the right person saw that message and took my suggestion!!!  If that's the case, THANKS A MILLION! 

[mattyg1306]

If I was ecstatic last year when I discovered the Jackson Sharp cars, you can bet that I'm 100x more thrilled now that I found out earlier today that there IS INDEED a Cass Scenic Railroad based tourist car on its way later this fall...(see new product announcements)!

Maybe the "right" people really do run Bachmann...as I said before THANKS A MILLION for listening to what people want.  This car appears to be an even better replica than I could have hoped for, and I can't wait to have a generous collection of 4 or 5 of them on my layout with Shay #5! 

Here is one more suggestion:  How about more HO Shays based on another prototype...the ones based on Shay #5 are great, but maybe you could make a series based on a Pacific Coast prototype (Cass Scenic RR #2 and #11 could easily be such prototype) or the 70 ton type like Cass Scenic RR #4 and Meadow River Lumber/Cass Scenic RR #7, or an HO version of Western Maryland "BIG" Six...also at Cass. 
And, I know I'm getting a little too specific now but maybe models of Cass's Bald Knob "all weather" boxcar type excursion cars or the shorter caboose units could be next in the rolling stock collection (I guess I should say I'm just kidding about the latter two, but my mouth is watering at the thought that my Cass Scenic RR obsession now seems to be well on its way to being fulfilled!).  Ah, well, I know I'm crazy, but the new type of Shays may not be such a bad idea...