@Bill N posted:First off thank you Dave for all of your work in researching and being a booster for this. Secondly I applaud any efforts to make authentic southern and SOUTHERN specific passenger cars available in O scale.
What concerns me is the idea that demand for southern specific passenger cars would be based on the reception for this particular offer. There are a number of reasons why SOUTHERN RAILWAY fans might pass on this. It is duplicating a train that came along at the end of SOUTHERN's steam era. The cars are not appropriate for many of the lesser trains that graced SOUTHERN's rails during that period. An eight car set is more train than many would want to buy. Some of us have minimum mainline curves tighter than O-72. That people like me are not the target market for this particular offer does not mean we are not in the market for southern specific passenger cars.
I personally think there is demand for earlier pre-war cars too for trains like the Tennessean. They unfortunately ran totally different cars than this train, so its really hard to cross-use anything between the two. I think regardless of the outcome of the Crescent, that Scott should look at a Tennessean or similar train sometime in the near future.
Interestingly enough, add one or two more car types, and you could actually turn this Crescent offering into a Peach Queen, and a few of the other lesser known trains that Southern ran from the 50's into the 60's/very early 70's.
Eight cars is ironically not a complete Crescent, but its O-scale, so there are space limitations due to size. It's tough, but I think that the economics of the situation requires an 8-car train. It's nothing against the Southern market, but its everything Scott has produced recently, B&O, NP, MOPAC, and even ATSF. As for non-scale length cars, I'm not sure anyone can help you there from a RTR standpoint. MTH cars are not accurate and I'm not sure if K-line ever did 18" lightweight cars that were truly representative of anything the Southern had. I'm not sure Lionel is going to do "prototype" stainless 18" cars anymore. They seem to be on 21" bandwagon too, at least for new tooling. That new Lionel Rio Grande Ski Train is super cool, but not something I model.
