George,
For the Dealer Commemorative Sets there are nine 4-packs available or 36 cars from the three railroads partnered on this train with no overlap of names. If you include the Golden Spike Club 12 car set it makes 48 car names we're using of the 77 cars purchased by the railroads to have 6 train sets to cover the schedule of this train again without any overlap of car names. What's unique about the Dealer sets is that as long as you order any combination of an A, B or C set you'll be prototypically correct for a 12 car California Zephyr train passenger train that would've had these mix of cars sometime in its 21 year and 2 day lifespan. It's highly doubtful that these combinations of CZ cars will ever be offered again by another manufacturer or ourselves because as I've explained before this has be a complex project to put together by Atlas. No other manufacturer in any scale has offered this flexibility of ordering the California Zephyr probably because of the complexity involved in doing it. Yes these sets do include 3 and 2-rail offerings. I'll be doing in depth seminars at York on the nuts & bolts of ordering these CZ sets with a brochure handout to those attending. Please know we've set-up the Dealer sets so that if you decide not to order a Golden Spike Club 12 set (the only way you can get it) and you want to go through a Dealer the Dealer can price a 12 set at exactly the same price as the Golden Spike Club set and be profitable. The Dealer advertised price is called M.A.P which stands for Minimum Advertised Price and is our way of trying to help the Dealers maintain a profit on their sets (long story no room to go into it here).
Peter, you're correct in that to purchase one of these sets is a no-brainer if the budget will allow it, thanks.
Jerry Kimble Atlas Model Railroad Company
