Mike,
ME TOO!! New tooling would be great but from what I've seen of Atlas O,the Trainman line is meant to be on the "clunky side"keeping their Master Line the highly detailed line as the cost reflects.
On a side note,I emailed Sam Clark at Kadee about progress on shelf couplers & it's definatlely a thing Kadee is planning,just TOO MANY other things ahead of it keeping it on a backburner.
The Protocraft type shelf coupler,(single & double shelfs), I guess is still in the works but who knows when will it be developed? There seems to be no way to track the product as I have no idea who the main manufacturer is.(?)
O scale is regarded as Lionel toy trains in most people's minds and the sad thing is it takes a long time to learn otherwise. I feel this is another thing holding growth in O Scale down. I took a hopper in the local hobby shop last year,I forgot why,but a modeler asked me what scale that car was. I think we'd have more modelers move over to O if they only new the magnitude of it. We need new scale cars & items like the shelf couplers to lift O out of the "toy market" & get it on a more level playing field with other scales.
I congratulate Lionel for "taking the bull by the horns," & producing the new mill gondola. I'd like to see the 4600 ACF cvd hopper made also.
Thanks,Mike.
Al Hummel
