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Go ahead and Photoshop some better track under that beauty.
Interesting replies so far here.I am aware the bipolar and little Joe tend to split each other's votes.At least two things on that list have research done on them.Also, don't assume those are the only things currently under development (not everything is a locomotive )@peteski 's post to my comments from the last poll are still applicable here.Regardless, whatever comes out will be cool and I think quite a few people will be happy.Enjoy!Kelley.www.dufordmodelworks.com
Kato should take a page out of the Con-Cor playbook and make some of these models in non-prototypical roadnames.Just imagine a Conrail DDA40X. Big Blue, indeed.
DD35 could be offered in EMD demo, UP, and SP...
The problem is, doing a Big Boy would exhaust Kato USA's entire annual R&D budget (and then some)...so other releases/projects would have to simmer on the back burner for quite a while.
And would save me from myself on a Shapeways project taking up space on my workbench. So, so many irons in the fire. But to be accurate, could not use the same external truck appearance - the '35s had inboard brake cylinders - nor the chassis, as the '35s were 10 feet shorter. Not that it would stop Kato, just raise the tooling cost of a "say what?!?" niche model.Unfortunately, if they did the 40X it would probably be in modern 6936 trim. There are a few changes that would have to be undone to restore the revenue appearance, almost as many changes as it would take to get the Bachmann right, although less shell-cutting. So if Kato does it, I'd be torn.
Chassis would work for DD35A
Well... the '35A was on the same 88' frame as the original cabless version. The carbody was shortened, which explains the unique flared radiator.The '40X is 98' long, and created a challenge for EMD in that they did not have the shop capacity to build the frame. It had to be shopped-out to a bridge fabricator, and more than a few Centennials developed cracked frames in the million-plus miles of their relatively short lives (1969/1970 to 1985).A lot more than you probably want to know here: http://utahrails.net/articles/up-dda40x.php