@Conrail6358 posted:I wish I had better news to report on these. All hope is not lost, but as of the past catalog showings we are not near enough preorders to confidently pull the trigger on these. We haven't cancelled the project however. We will be running these, along with the matching passenger cars, again in 2021 C1. If we can get enough orders, then I'd love to see these get made. Dave put a lot of time into redesigning these to make them better (similar to the way the Baldwin Switcher and GP7 have been improved over the originals.) And Ed even jumped in to lend a hand and a loco so we could make this all possible. I have high hopes for these Jets. But there is some significant tooling money needed to make this happen, and unlike GP7s, road name options for frequent reruns of these aren't really that common. So we need to know that there will be sufficient demand to cover all costs.
If we can't get the orders, I'm afraid this will probably be another in the list of Flyer projects that could have been. At least for the time being. I wanted to post an update for those who have preordered and those who may be on the fence; I think you all deserve to know the status. Please don't turn this thread into a rehash of the BTO/Preorder/see it first/etc battles we've had before. Next year marks 75 years of American Flyer S Gauge - and I think there are some good things in store for the year to come. I'd love for these to be one of them! Thank you all for your years of continuous support and enthusiasm.
Thanks for the update Dave. I can't help wondering how many more orders would have been placed if these would have been totally retooled to be more scale (I.E. remove the awful gapped pilot) and had kadee and scale wheel options like the diesels? Just seeing the success of the Legacy Berks makes me wonder. I would have ordered both EP5 and the passenger cars if they were less traditional AF and more scale models. Even if the passenger cars were upgraded to detailed interiors with Kadee option would have been good enough for me. As they sit I have no interest unfortunately.
I just wonder as the market shrinks if the more scale detailed Legacy models aren't going to be more successful? Personally, that's all that interests me. I love my 2 Berks so much that I'm going back to buy the rest of the road names. Same with the updated cylindrical hoppers.
Keep the scale stuff coming I say!
