HO/OO Train Set Ideas

[BubbleBuddyFan]

Bachmann HO/OO Disney Train Sets I Want to See

Live Action The Little Mermaid Train Set (Limited Edition)
Disney Princess Train Set
Casey Junior Circus Train Set
Winnie the Pooh Train Set
Plus More to Come

Bachmann HO/OO Scale Seasonal Train Sets I Want to See

The Nightmare Before Christmas Train Set
DreamWorks Halloween Train Set
DreamWorks Christmas Train Set
Rankin and Bass Christmas Train Set
Plus More to Come

[Terry Toenges]

I guess one thing it would depend on is if Bachmann is willing to pay Disney's or other companies' licensing fees.

[Red Tender 5]

They already make IP-themed train sets for Disney, so having more doesn't seem like too large a stretch. I'm skeptical that the agreement between Disney and Bachmann would allow easy creation of new themed train sets though.

[bbmiroku]

Licensing agreements are generally per property, so Bachmann may have to pay a licensing fee for each property unless stated in another contract.

That being said, I would love a Nightmare Before Christmas HO or N set...

[trainman203]

I'd love to see a steam era freight train set with the following:

1.  A consolidation or decapod in any road name besides union pacific, Pennsylvania or Santa Fe. Preferably one of the deep South Road names from the golden Lee Reily spectrum days,  With DCC and economami sound.

2.  At least seven or eight 40' freight cars from the 1940s.  This might include three box cars, since they usually made up the bulk of a manifest freight, a gondola, a hopper, a black UTLX tank car, and a flatcar. All in either black or box car red. No Dayglow colors to appeal to the kiddies. May be a refrigerator car, which could be either yellow or orange, like most of them were in those days.
3.  A wooden caboose like Bachmann has never offered. If they can select an obscure prototype from a 100 mile shortline no one ever heard of for their mogul,  they can certainly select a Missouri Pacific four window caboose which is very similar to hundreds of others on the rails back then.

You would call this set "The Glory Days of Steam"or something like that.

Bachmann already makes everything for the set except the classic wooden caboose which wouldn't be a bad thing to add to the product line.  They have the AAR 40' boxcar and suitabile gondolas, hoppers, and tank cars.

The goal is vintage authenticity. I don't believe you have to have eye-popping dayglo cars to sell a train set. The Models are already there. And some of them are even painted correctly already.

What sayeth the Bach Man to such a radical proposal?

[trainman203]

An even greater thing about this steam age train set is that all the licensing fees are already paid!

[jward]

With regards to the original poster, sets like these "may" have had a market 40 years ago, but I'm not sure they'd sell to-day. The trend in the hobby has been trains that are at least plausible in the real world, if not absolute prototype fidelity.

That said, personally I'd love to see somebody do models of the Frisco F7s or FAs, in the original black and yellow paint. There aren't even decals available to do these that I have found.


As for sets, how about heritage sets? You already make locomotives for the various big railroads presently operating. A heritage set would have these locomotives pulling cars from the railroads that merged to create these mega railroads.

NS pulling cars from N&W, SOuthern, Conrail, etc.

Union Pacific pulling cars from Katy, Missouri Pacific, Western, Pacific, etc.

BNSF  pulling cars from BN, Santa Fe, Northern Pacific, etc.

CSX pulling cars from CHessie Systen, L&N, Seaboard COast Line, etc

CN pulling cars from  Illinois Central, Grand Trunk, EJ&E, Wisconsin Central, etc.

CP pulling cars from D&H, Soo Line and Milwaukee Road.

The Thoroughbred set is a good example of what I'm talking about.

[trainman203]

Jeffrey, I recall that Bachmann a few years ago had what might be called a junior version of my proposed set. It had a Mogul pulling three or four period freight cars, trailed by a a Pullman green open platform wood combine....... a classic branchline mixed train.  I suppose it didn't sell very well because it's no longer in the lineup.

[trainman203]

But. I don't know if you could say across the board that today's train sets are very realistic.  I mean, those colors! WHOOOHHH!  Get your sunglasses!  I live 200 feet from the CSX main and see freights go by every day. While they aren't all brown and black cars and feature varieties of colors, they aren't fluorescent dayglo hues either but generally subdued, probably from being out in the sun for years. I don't like looking at contemporary layouts, even the large, gigantic famous ones are full of dayglo cars in the yard.  Way too bright.

[jward]

I'm not sure what you mean by fluorescent dayglo hues. Those have never been widely used in the rail industry and I don't see them on models either. DO you perhaps mean bright colours? Those have been used by the railroads since at least the first streamliners. They seemed to become widespread in the years after ww2, and they've been on freight cars and locomotives since then. Yes, weathering has subdued the colours, but I don't mind them at all. They are far less offensive to me than the graffiti that covers everything to-day.

I remember when the first CHessie System locomotives appeared in 1972, they and the red and white Western Maryland units were the brightest things around in an area dominated by reilroads with black and blue engines the local railroads used in that austerity era when simple paint schemes were in favour. I was immediately a fan. Conrail's bright blue further livened things up. But other areas of the country had Frisco red & white, Burlington red and grey, Santa Fe, Soo Line and KCS white, Milwaukee orange, and other bright colours. I would much rather see them than the drab Norfolk Southern locomotives that run past the house.

[trainman203]

I find the loud colors on models much more intense than those in reality, I thought I said that. I don't find the colors in contemporary prototype trains that bothersome really. It's the models, and the yards full of them on some of these really big layouts, where I think the modeler ought to have a better sense of reality about the colors.  I'd post photos of some of these eye scorchers, but I don't know how to post photos...... like just about everybody else except a couple of people who manage to post anything. In an aside, I had hoped that the Bach Man would've made posting photos easier in this new addition of the forum, copy and paste, like everybody else in the world, but he didn't. And I think the forum is the worse for it.

[Yard Master]

Hi all,

The Bachmann team is aware of the issues with uploading image attachments. We are very close to our storage capacity for the forum, and except for select images with small enough file sizes, you may not be able to upload any further attachments. If you are looking to post an image that is directly online, you will have to provide a direct link to the image's URL. If your image is on your personal device, you will have to upload at an external service such as Google Drive and provide a link. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to have a more permanent solution in the future.

We are always happy to receive suggestions for new products including train sets. Please note that while we will monitor this thread and the rest of the forum for suggestions, we can't guarantee that we can make any of them a real product. In particular, it is difficult to make products requiring third party licensing, unless it is a license Bachmann already has the rights to. (Currently, Thomas & Friends, Ringling Bros., Boy Scouts of America, and Norman Rockwell.)

Please feel free to keep posting your train set suggestions in this thread, as well as Thomas & Friends suggestions in the T&F forum!

[trainman203]

I'm not completely sure how licensing fallen flag railroad names on models works. I know that the Bach Man has already produced 1940s era freight cars with fallen flags names like Santa Fe and Pennsylvania and such.  I'm probably mistaken, but I thought that once you paid those guys off, you could use those names on models from then on out.

Is the case more like, you tell the XYZ Railroad, that you want to manufacture a certain number of cars decorated in their name, in a certain run and then they charge you on a per car basis? 

[Yard Master]

I'm not completely sure how licensing fallen flag railroad names on models works. I know that the Bach Man has already produced 1940s era freight cars with fallen flags names like Santa Fe and Pennsylvania and such.  I'm probably mistaken, but I thought that once you paid those guys off, you could use those names on models from then on out.

Is the case more like, you tell the XYZ Railroad, that you want to manufacture a certain number of cars decorated in their name, in a certain run and then they charge you on a per car basis? 

Yes, using "fallen flag" and current railroads is not a problem. The licensing comment is more in regards to non-railroad brands like Disney and Dreamworks.

[trainman203]

Thank you!