I went to the World's Greatest Hobby show in Costa Mesa, CA on Saturday and the Bachmann booth had the first tooling samples of their upcoming N scale Siemens Venture coaches on display.
The unpainted tooling samples featured diaphragms, detailed interiors and separate metal grabirons:
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I flipped one of the cars on its side to show the underside. It has metal wheelsets, underbody details (check out the fluting on the underside) and body-mounted couplers that allow for extra-wide swing (the draft gear box is not affixed to the body, nor is it part of the truck; it's on a swinging arm in the underbody that's independent of the trucks. I don't know of its minimum radius requirements yet.
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A closeup view of the ends of the cars. Note the grabiron detail on the extra-wide diaphragm of the car on the left.
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The cars are shown in Bachmann's catalog (
also viewable online). They will have interior lighting and will be released around December 2025, in the Amtrak Midwest and the VIA Rail Canada schemes (the VIA version gets that real awesome-looking cab car). Bachmann also plans to release later this year the HO scale Venture cars in the Amtrak California (San Joaquins) scheme. The N scale version, according to the Bachmann rep, would probably be out in late 2026.
List price is $139. EACH. 😱
(The HO scale versions will be $149).
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