A thing people need to remember is for over 10 years (and still, despite the re-release) Tomix is not easily available to the Western market. While younger people like us are savvy enough to use websites like eBay or Amazon to find them, your average joe N scale modeller who has grandchildren would likely not get an N scale Thomas unless it was available at their local hobby store. Bachmann sees a potential market here with how many N scalers there are in the USA to get them a more-accessible Thomas and Percy.

Initial thoughts;

Everyone expected Red Rosie so at least they're getting her out the way first. It seems Bachmann is going to keep milking existing toolings in the HO range for a long time. Maybe someday we'll get a new engine, but it seems less and less likely each year.

The new wagons, I expect will be these, since their designs are in other ranges already;



The mining wagon will likely be one of these;




If they bring the Mainline Hopper into the range, I'd be surprised.

N Scale is unexpected, but honestly not a surprise; there were several discussions made about N scale Thomas being made last year, and a lot of people collected the Tomix Thomas range recently, so Bachmann must see a potential market there. If they end up using the Graham Farish wagons though, I'd be disappointed as they'd be much smaller scale compared to the Tomix toolings.


As for the Flat Wagon w/ Logs; here's hoping it's the former Flatbed w/ Paint Drums tooling, and not the RF Container Wagon or Well Wagon toolings by accident... Logically, it -should- be the former hopefully.

Hopefully when the catalog goes up, we'll know for sure of everything.

By "deal with it" do you mean not give our money to products we don't want and voice our disinterest because the only way a company can improve its product line is through customer feedback, aka the same process of Facebook Moms voicing to Mattel that their kids didn't like Thomas & Friends Wood, so Mattel took the brand back and redid the paintjobs (though we'll see how that pans out in the long run)

Cancelling the line would be shooting themselves in the foot since Bachmann has straight up said at NRMA that the Thomas range is a huge revenue bringer for the company. Cost cuts and production scale backs are likely but it'd be bad news for them if they had to end the line.

Bachmann is probably making wagons from the Trackmaster lines, as well as making up their own colorful wagons because they already milked the fairly normal-looking wagons years ago. The salt van, the M wagon, coal wagon, blue wagon, etc. were all wagons that were already in the show, and Bachmann for the most part, has blown through every option possible. The only thing I haven't really seen them do is...
- Flat Bed with different loads
- Container flat wagon with different loads (could repurpose the crate from the Christmas set easily)
- Dark brown or black variations of the vent vans, open wagons, and Mail Car
- Circus Train (the most surprising, to me)

It's no surprise Bachmanns making up their own stuff when they've already made rolling stock of most things in the show. Anything else would basically require a whole new tooling (like the Works Unit). Unless Bachmann suddenly feels a valid reason to make new toolings that are more accurate to the way items are in the show (and if they do, get ready for CGI proportioned wagons instead of Season 1-12, which would be better proportioned, but minor details like that get lost when you're adapting a kids shows content into toys for a strictly business reason)

Basically, don't expect much interesting OO wagons for a long time, if ever again. Bachmanns best bet to keep things fresh and interesting is trucks with model era-style Troublesome Truck faces. CGI faces just aren't as interesting or expressive, and don't hold a niche collectors interest.

There's plenty of building ideas, and I still stand by the ones I've mentioned before:

Quote from: Cheeky_ULP on March 24, 2018, 03:40:27 PM
These are all very interesting choices. One thing I was wanting to bring up in the future was the importance of whether buildings need to be resin or plastic. Resin buildings do look much better and much more accurate, but they are also more expensive to make and sell. I think if the smaller accessories like the water tower were made of plastic, it would be fine, but I feel like bigger buildings like stations, sheds, and warehouses come out looking better visually when they're made with resin.

It's a shame that it seems Bachmann has narrowed down on resin buildings, but I would still like to see a few more made. It makes me wonder if the initial resin buildings didn't sell well, hence the lack of a third round.

Sheds:
We definitely could use a narrow gauge shed. I'd agree that any narrow gauge shed would be acceptable, but my personal preference would be the ones from Season 4:


Castle:
I'll echo the ruined castle as well. Those are a classic icon of Thomas imagery, and representation in the range would be highly welcome. While there are many ruined castles you can buy from any store, the Thomas ones always had a unique design that resonated with my mind.

Retaining Wall:
I like the idea of a retaining wall; I think if they wanted to go for something that has a distinctly "Thomas" design, they should make the retaining walls seen throughout the early seasons:

The show practically already designed the product here! You can see where it cuts off after 4 arches. Customers could thus be allowed to decide how many segments they want their wall to extend by buying more segments as they wish. I also always liked how this particular wall segment had a roof-like piece to it, making it even taller, and adding to that uniquely Thomas "look." (most likely to hide parts of the sets back then).

Stations:
Ffarquhuar Station also seems like a no-brainer. It's the most iconic station in the show next to Knapford, having been on the introduction seen on nearly every VHS and many DVDs.

I'm more surprised you didn't mention Dryaw Station instead of Callan Station; Dryaw would have a higher chance, since it has appeared in CGI in many episodes lately. Bachmann also already made the Nissen shed, as well as Harold who would go nicely next to Dryaw. This would also give Bachmann a chance to make a footbridge and additional platforms, in a similar vein that Hornby did their own Dryaw. The Round water tower is also at the back of Dryaw, so it'd be yet another item already in the Thomas range that could tie it all together.


The Signal Gantry:
I've made many posts before about the Signal Gantry, and I'd agree it belongs in the range as well. I wrote about it in greater detail in a previous post:

Quote from: Sparks on October 21, 2017, 02:35:13 AM
I would like to see the Signal Gantry Junction personally:


In CGI, it has a four track and a three track variation. The difference is how many arches/poles it has:



Both versions appear in various scenes up to Season 21. Personally, I prefer the four track variation, where it only has two passage ways (as per the model picture), as it has been around in that form since the Classic Series. The 3 passage way version was introduced in Season 17.

I think overall... A narrow gauge shed, a ruined castle, Ffarquhaur or Dryaw, and a signal gantry ties in to a nice 4-6 or so products to focus on for a future year. That's where I'll stop for now, until I get more ideas.

Maybe Bachmann would have more room for toolings of engines people would actually buy, like Stepney or Daisy, if they don't put any more resources into things like Chuggington... I think an HO -and- an O scale line is quite enough, and I think the sales of each range are testament to that.

They could announce a flatbed with a pile of dust as a load for all I care as long as we get Stepney or Daisy with it, in all honesty.

And if they're gonna make more OO9 engines as a PR recently said, then by all means, please, do Sir Handel and Peter Sam.

A bit of a manufactures hiccup coming out the box, but it was fairly easy to put back in place. Bachmann should definitely do a bit of quality control at the assembly lines though, considering this happend with Toad, as well.

Anyway, the face is definitely the highlight of the Spiteful Brakevan. It looks dead on to how he looks in the TV series, and no doubt about it. The tooling itself is still the old Mainline brake van tooling. For what it is though, it does the job for junior modellers. The paint job is clean and crisp. The design, an invention of Bachmanns, is derived from the Large Scale brake van, which in turn was derived from mixing the TV series and Railway Series designs of the brake vans, and is a welcome addition to the HO/OO range. I'd recommend this for any junior modellers who need a brake van to go along side Toad on their layouts.

If you're a more advanced modeller though, I'll get back to you on that in a bit...

All fa come together as one

If they're the wrong scale, then I don't see the point

Funny enough, Japanese Thomas fans -love- Boulder, so there is a bit of a market there.

Yes, I plan to repaint the spare Scruffeys into the green Season 2 open wagons.

If I wanted a more realistic/perfect Stepney, I'd just buy the new Dapol A1 that's coming out that's being commissioned by the NRM and Rails of Sheffield.

The model series design is what's nostalgic to me, and is the era/style of merchandise I put my pocketbook into. Anything short of that is gonna lose my interest fairly quickly, and any CGI design is going to try and be some weird "hybrid" of the classic series and actual locomotive prototype as they tried with Duck, Oliver, Donald, Douglas, etc. and even when the CGI animators stick closer to the original design, they miss certain details and proportions by a margin (Bulgy, the new Trevor model).

Basically, I don't -want- some new design for Stepney. I want a model of the character I grew up with and have nostalgia for.

Stepney so that he gets made with the model design ASAP, rather than at some point the CGI show makes a weird, inaccurate render of him and then Bachmann will have to use that render for a reference.

How about Bachmann just make Stepney or Daisy so that classic fans can be happy after several years of newer engines? Nobodys screaming or raving for Sidney, Nia, Rebecca or Stanley. Heck, nobodys even screaming for Red Rosie, Black James or LBSC Thomas either. People only are mentioning those because they expect Bachmann to make those, not necessarily want them. The recent polls from multiple websites such as Facebook and Twitter show that Stepney, Daisy, Sir Handel, and Peter Sam are the hot picks among the fans.

I feel like at this point, other engines shouldn't even be considered or focused upon for the time being. The surveys have already filtered out the top choices.

It's officially Fall, so this is the results of my Summer haul. This year it was mainly focused on N scale:




With cooler weather coming around the corner, it'll soon be optimal weather to paint in again.