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SP Daylight Overkill?

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  • Member since
    July 2004
  • From: Carmichael, CA
  • 8,055 posts
Posted by twhite on Thursday, July 10, 2008 6:37 PM

Mark--

Even though I grew up in SP territory (Donner Pass), I pretty much defer to you on your knowledge of the passenger trains.  So my question is--was the post-WWII San Joaquin Daylight largely made up of the ORIGINAL pre-war Coast Daylight cars (with the addition of the home-made 3/4 dome car, of course) or did SP order cars specifically for the train?  I've always been a little confused on that issue.  I know that one company is promising the pre-WWII Coast Daylight and another is promising a post-WWII version.  Of course, logically, neither would ever see service on my Yuba River Sub, even though I give SP trackage rights, but I'd be kind of leaning toward the San Joaquin consist, since I have a couple of MT's that could certainly use a passenger train. 

Just curious.

Tom Smile [:)]

  • Member since
    April 2003
  • From: Martinez, CA
  • 5,440 posts
Posted by markpierce on Thursday, July 10, 2008 2:46 PM

If memory serves, the manufacturers aren't all to produce the same version of the trains.  There is the early version, lettered "Southern Pacific Lines" and later version lettered "Southern Pacific." 

Different SP-Pacific Lines routes had different Daylight trains.  There was the Coast, both Morning and Noon versions (LA-Frisco) and the ancillary Oakland-San Jose route, the San Joaquin (LA-Oakland) and the ancillary Sacramento-Lathrop route, and the Shasta Daylight (Oakland-Portland).  Also, SP subsidiaries Texas & New Orleans and St. Louis-Southerwestern had their own versions.

Mark

  • Member since
    April 2003
  • From: Martinez, CA
  • 5,440 posts
Posted by markpierce on Thursday, July 10, 2008 2:11 PM

It is about time accurate (not just Daylight-painted, non-SP-prototype cars) non-brass models of the most beautiful passenger train in the world will be available.

Mark

  • Member since
    June 2004
  • From: Pacific Northwest
  • 3,864 posts
Posted by Don Gibson on Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:51 PM

COMPETITION keeps the price down.

 

Don Gibson .............. ________ _______ I I__()____||__| ||||| I / I ((|__|----------| | |||||||||| I ______ I // o--O O O O-----o o OO-------OO ###########################
  • Member since
    July 2004
  • From: Carmichael, CA
  • 8,055 posts
Posted by twhite on Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:43 PM

Frankly, I'm not holding my breath that ANY of them will have a "Daylight" train soon, or if at all.  BLI and Genesis have been promising the train since I had hair and it was a different color, LOL!  The N-scalers finally have their Kato (I saw one at my LHS and it's a really handsome offering), but we HO'ers are still in a Holding Pattern.  Granted, it's a 'niche' train, but it's an extremely FAMOUS one, so if just one mfgr. comes out with it, I think it will be popular enough to sell well.  And of course, it's a unique train--you just can't slap Daylight colors on a standard streamlined coach and say "Here's your Daylight"--, you have to do tooling for articulated cars, a 3-unit articulated diner--even the windows aren't like anyone elses windows. 

I'm not going to hold my breath over this--4 mfgrs promising the train. 

But then (he said with a sigh), the market got flooded with Big Boys--talk about your 'niche' locomotive--so there's no telling. 

Tom

  • Member since
    July 2006
  • From: New York, NY
  • 330 posts
SP Daylight Overkill?
Posted by MerrilyWeRollAlong on Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:33 PM
According to the Walthers website and MTH's website, MTH will be coming out with their verison of the Southern Pacific Daylight trains.  It looks like SP modelers will have plenty of choices when it comes to modeling Trains 98/99 between BLI/PCM, Athearns and now MTH.  I do personally do love the train and it's nice to see it being made/sold for a semi-affordable price but is there really a huge market to warrent 3 manufactures producing the same train?  It's as if the SP Daylight has become to HO-scale passenger cars what the F-units has become to HO-scale locomotive.  I would think that the manufacturers would want to offer something different as oppose to going head to head with each other over a niche train. Confused [%-)]

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