I've personally seen my favorite Bachmann prototype a few times in my life:

This is former ET&WNC 4-6-0 # 12:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKDs5IlVbM4

Quote from: Yardmaster on August 02, 2016, 03:52:06 PM
Shipping March 2017

D'oh, there it is in the original graphic. I can't believe I missed that...

Anyone have a clue when we'll start seeing these among the retailers?

NICE!   I've been wondering what (if anything) Bachmann had coming at the NMRA convention this year.
For a long time, I've been wanting to make one of the laser kits that looks a lot like that. I'm glad I put that off, now.
I model the WW2 years and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to see one of those in either grey or OD green with some soldiers sitting in it on my layout...

I'd love to see what the Lee Riley one looks like. I never met the man but I'm eternally indebted to him for all his work in On30 and being almost single-handedly being responsible for bringing me back to the hobby.

As much as I love On30, maybe your available space for a layout might be better served by a smaller scale? Just sayin'...

Quote from: The train kid on June 16, 2016, 03:45:03 PM
I actually like the micromark track and specifically the price.

Well, the Micro-Engineering stuff looks good, it's amazingly fragile. I had two turnouts break at the switch points (of course after the track was all soldered together) and a third had the rails pop right off the 'ties' coming out of the package. I salvaged that one with some HO spikes and some ACC glue, but I shouldn't have had to.

Frankly, if I had to do it over, I'd have used Peco track. It's much sturdier.

I run sometimes on a large On30 layout and often run the guy's ten-wheelers. There's a substantial grade and to be honest, I hadn't attributed the 'back and forth' motion going downgrade to gearing in the locomotives until just now.
I only run the ten-wheelers on my own layout but I intentionally put no grades on my layout, so I never see this in action at home.

Same thing happened at the show in Portland last year. I was there and all the buzz was about other scales and gauges, but hardly anything in On30 (if you were a N-scaler, though, you'd have loved the show). There wasn't even any club On30 stuff, just one single module that a modeler put together and that was it for the entire show, from this photo I took of it:

Dang, I showed the Bachmann folks my ET&WNC tank car and was told that they might consider making it part of their line as it's just the unlettered one with the right lettering, and I was hoping maybe it might be in this year's line-up


I still think it'd make a great car as it's not an exact model but it's awfully darned close and the tank cars were used during the timeframe the ET&WNC had the green/gold ten-wheelers and also in the wartime black/gold colors. Two made it to the abandonment of the 3-foot line in 1950.

ET&WNC 205 would be perfect for this...

I find it odd how many diesel conversion kits are out there, yet hardly any RTR diesels are made for On30.
I gotta give props to Bachmann for the Whitcomb, even though I haven't bought one as it simply doesn't work in my 1943 ET&WNC layout concept... I still drool over them when I see them at my local hobby shop. I've seen/heard one run with the sound installed.

Quote from: Hamish K on May 12, 2016, 10:08:22 PM
The US army 2-8-2 mentioned did run in Australia, on the 3 foot 6 inch gauge in Queensland, and a couple are preserved in Australia.

There are a bunch of them preserved all over the place. I've seen several in the US and ridden the cab of one (190, at Tweetsie RR in Blowing Rock, NC), the one on the right here:

The earlier photo of 195 at Skagway, Alaska wasn't mine, but I have seen that one twice.

What is the market for Aussie stuff within the hobby? I have no idea. To say a company should make something because a few people want it, doesn't make much business sense if there's not a large enough base for people to buy said item.
A few that might possibly sell to US fans could be:
US Army 2-8-2:

East Broad Top loco:

White Pass & Yukon 70-series locomotives:

Quote from: railtwister on May 12, 2016, 08:26:54 AM
Now that Lee Riley has so sadly passed, I wonder how much longer we will see Bachmann continue to produce any On30. As a modeler, Lee had a different perspective than most other corporate executive types, which was fortunate for all of us in the On30 community.

I wonder, this, as well. he was almost out the door on retirement when he passed, so Bachmann surely had something in mind for On30 when he was gone either way.

MR's June issue has a nice tribute to him up front.

Cool, I don't think I'd seen that before.
If you have any interests in the subject, I strongly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Narrow-gauge-mans-land-railways/dp/0961546727

I don't have my reference books with me right now, but I recognized the model of the howitzer they were using.
Hardly any WW1 RR guns still exist, but a few WW2 ones still do...
Dahlgren Naval testing center had a 12" RR mount there, and the Washington Navy yard has a 16" mount at their museum...


There are a couple of K5 German guns at the Army Ordnance Museum at Fort Lee (which was at Aberdeen, MD for decades) and at the Batterie Todt Museum at Audinghen, France 
When I was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground, we used to run PT formations out to one of them as a turnaround point. I never got tired of that.