New Budd observation car... Please do it right

[jmlaboda]

Saw the announcement in the .pdf file that was posted about the new releases and noted that you intend to do a Budd sleeper lounge observation car.  The design shown does not match ANY prototype Budd car but there were similar cars that were built for the New York Central that had the large windows in the observation end of the car.  Please do the car right... without the extra windows in the lounge area it is nothing more than a round-end solarium car with no obvious prototype.  It would be a shame to offer this car for what you intend to make off of it because you did not do the car right.  Contact me at jmlaboda[at]gmail.com and I can help point you in the right direction on what the car should look like!!!

[gatrhumpy]

They're not going to offer a model or change it to satisfy one person. Buy it and kitbash it yourself.

[spookshow]

Apparently you are not acquainted with Jerry (noted passenger car expert and proprietor of the Passenger Car Photo Index - http://passcarphotos.info/). I'm sure this has nothing to do with satisfying his own wants, and everything to do with helping Bachmann make the most accurate model possible.

Cheers,
-Mark

[brokemoto]

One thing that I do find curious is that no one has issued a lightweight passenger/baggage combine in N.   B-mann is showing a coach and a baggage, even if they do appear to be a "generic" type.   How difficult could it be to butt up on a computer half a coach to half a baggage car to make one.  C-C missed a similar opportunity.

There are only two Standard passenger/baggages of which I am aware, in N:  B-mann's shorty C&NW based cars and the RR which is based on an ATSF car of which, or so I understand, only two existed.  The passenger apartment on that one was really a first class section, or so I seem to recall.  I would expect that MT would issue a HW combine, at some point, or WOT, as those two are issuing Standards or HWs.

I would suspect that the "generic" corrugateds spring from B-mann's generic steam.  Funny, though, given the releases from Kato, Athearn, Fox Valley and even B-mann, it does appear that the road specific stuff sells.   More than one vendor has told me that the B-mann EM-1 outsold all of the other road specific steam from Athearn and Kato.  I would guess that this is why the Fox Valley B&O waggontops in the 1940s and 1950s schemes never even made it to the shelves of most stores.  There is one vendor who did have some after everyone else's were gone.  Even he is out, now.  He tends to sell at full list, at best, or, if something is in demand, he is not above jacking up the price a few dollars.  He had the waggontops jacked up two or three dollars.

[jmlaboda]

Apparently you are not acquainted with Jerry (noted passenger car expert and proprietor of the Passenger Car Photo Index - http://passcarphotos.info/). I'm sure this has nothing to do with satisfying his own wants, and everything to do with helping Bachmann make the most accurate model possible.

Thanks Mark!!!  You are very correct!!!

I have advocated for quality (not necessarily accurate) N-scale passenger car models for 15 years on the web and decades elsewhere.  My N-scale Varnish has been a great forum for sharing information on and ideas about how to model passenger train equipment in N-scale for those many years (being the second Yahoo1 Group that I founded... the RR Caboose List being the first) and it has led to more accurate models being produced.

Even Bachmann has seen what a more accurate model can bring, what with their retooling of the Amfleet I models.  Make no mistake about it... I am trying to help Bachmann make some money that then can be invested in other new models... not trying just to satisfy my own desires (I can't use these models... they are too modern for my freelanced roads).

As shown, thankfully just an Engineering drawing, the lounge area of the observation is too small as far as the windows go, being the same sort of thing found on Milwaukee Road Skytop observation cars and one Illinois Central Modernized Heavyweight observation car (which later received additional windows in the observation lounge area).  Producing a more accurate model would not only make Bachmann some green but would please a lot of N-scale modelers, even if it is not necessarily accurate for their own chosen prototype.  Basing the model more accurately on the New York Central Budd observation cars (the only Budd observation cars that had the larger windows) would spark a lot of interest in the minds of modelers, making for a very successful model.

I can only hope that Bachmann will make some changes so that their model is truly a good one!!!

Brokemoto... have hope... a better heavyweight combine is coming... maybe even late this year!!!

[brokemoto]

Brokemoto... have hope... a better heavyweight combine is coming... maybe even late this year!!!

Let me take an edge-uh-mah-kaytidd guess at this "better combine".  Considering that after careful study and examination of the photographs, plans, drawings, links and citations from your Passenger Car Pages,  I have made the initial cuts on:

1.  Lima/MP PRR P70 and PBM-70 with the intent of bashing an unrebuilt Pennsylvania PB-70;
2.  A RR LW Hill Lines coach and baggage mail with the intent of bashing a Pennsylvania modernised
PB-70;

I would have to guess that it is either an original PB-70 or a modernised PB-70, more likely the former as you did post "heavyweight".