To the powers that be: I am interested in modeling SAL, ACL, FEC, RF&P, AT, SCL etc. passenger trains. Looking at the products available, there are several missing links. 1) What ever happened to the Sunlounge kits? 2)I want several cars in the ACL purple scheme. However, your decal sets do not have lettering for RF&P and Pennsylvania cars. We need these. 3) Also, there are no Seaboard Coast Line pass car decals. I need lettering, car names, and heralds. They are not available anywhere. Microscale doen't seem to acknowledge there were passenger trains in the southeast, but you guys do have them do custom runs of decals. 4) I live in NJ and have been bugging Atlas to do an AlCo C-430. We have 4 operating in NY/NJ area. However, I think SCL modelers would have an interest in them, since SCL bought the 3 demos. Maybe you guys can e-mail Atlas and try and drum up some support. Is there any help on the way? Thank you.

-- Craig A Harrison (MrMotorcoach@aol.com), April 12, 2001

Answers

Personally, I am quite partial to Microscale for quality and sharpness. The other society decals are excellent in sharpness etc. I believe Walthers also made SCL pass car sets, but Walthers decals are very poor in quality. Example, I bought a set of RF&P diesels for E/F units which I will never use. The lettering bled, and you could barely read the smaller lettering. They were simply horrible. But being a society, I would've hoped for uncanny accuracy and completeness from the ACL/SAL products

-- Craig Harrison (MrMotorcoach@aol.com), April 21, 2001.

Champion Decal produced HO decals for SCL passenger cars in the late 1960's or early 1970's with the black lettering, heralds for the window bands and some car names (I purchased and used several sets). Although they are out of production, what's the possibility that Champ still has the graphics and could do a limited run for the society for those members interested?

-- Mark Huband (mark.v.huband@convergys.com), April 18, 2001.

Craig,

Thanks for your suggestions. Many of your "wants" have been voiced by others as well. The supplier of our styrene Sun Lounge car sides is out of business but we are actively looking for other sources of styrene sides now. Regarding purple lettering for the ACL connecting lines, a manufacturer has these in development now and we hope they will be available very shortly. We have discussed before the need for SCL passenger car lettering and will take a fresh look at getting those done.

-- Larry Goolsby (LGoolsby@aphsa.org), April 17, 2001.