Longer frieght cars: Testing the waters??

[S. Calloway]

 I was wondering if Bachmann has thought about longer frieght cars? The new "shorties" are wonderfully neat little cars, BUT... Alot of narrow gauge railroads had cars in the 30ft or longer catogory. The D&RGW,EBT, ET&NWC, S.P. as well as many others. This is a large market on it's own,compared to the shorter stuff.
   I am well aware that this is On30, but Grant Line has kits to bring some of these locomotives to On3, and many on here, have been asking about D&RGW locomotives as well as other "large" (that's funny to me) engines to be produced in the future. (forgot the WP&Y in Alaska) Even my "large" Tweetsie ten wheelers are dwarfed sitting beside standard gauge coal hoppers !!  I was just testing the water as to what others out there would like to see for furture releases. And just for the record, ET&WNC no. 12 sitting next to engine 190 at Tweetsie Railroad, is a really good comparison of what a large narrow gauge engine REALLY is! 190 is HUGE compared to "little" no.12!! 190 is the Yukon Queen from the WP&Y. Just sayin'

         Dwayne Calloway

[railtwister]

For larger 3' gauge prototypes, San Juan Engineering has some nice kits and ready-to-run, and American Model Supply has some nice ready-to-run freight cars. I would hope that should Bachmann chose to do larger On30 freight cars, they would choose different prototypes so as not to duplicate what is currently offered by other manufacturers. I would like to see some Maine two-foot prototypes (many of which were about 28'-30' long), to compliment the already available Forney, which is a beautiful model. However, just making some of the current rolling stock models available in roadnames representing the Maine two footers would make me almost as happy, and would look great next to the Forney, the pulpwood car, and side-door caboose.

The down side that needs to be considered is the fact that longer equipment will translate into bigger radius curves being needed. One of the great attractions of most of Bachmann's current On30 offerings is that an On30 layout can be built almost the same size as an HO layout, needing only slightly wider clearance between the tracks and structures and other obstacles like tunnel portals and table edges.

Bill in FtL

[Stevelewis]

I think it  would  be  very  much  a  consideration as to  if  the  COST of  tooling  up  for  longer  freight  cars  would  actualy  be  worth  the  investment,  Moulds (Molds) dont  come  cheap  and   Bachmann  would  have  to  be pretty  sure  that  they  would  sell enough to  make  a profit, and remember  its not  just  a  case  of  producing  1  type of  LONG freight  car,  there  would  have  to be several  types .

Its  possible  a  case  of   longer  cars  being  left  with  the  smaller  manufaturers
, such  as  Accucraft,  whose  range  has  sold reasonably well over here  but in low  volumes,  only.