2022 the Year of Amtrak for Model Railroaders?

2021 was the 50th Anniversary of the National  Passenger Railroad Corporation or as most know it as Amtrak after being established in 1971. The 1970's were a dark time in American railroad history. The great passenger railroads in the US have been on a steady decline for the past decade when the government stepped in to save the day. In the beginning the trains of Amtrak could be seen running all over the country with mixed consists of passenger equipment from roads such as the Union Pacific, Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, in addition to the already mixed bag of cars from Penn Central and the Burlington Northern. While not every great train was saved many of the well known name trains survived into Amtrak with some of them continuing on to this day like the Great Northern's Empire Builder. Although the long distance trains cover thousands of miles across the lower 48, the highest concentration of Amtrak trains travel over the Northeast Corridor. Check out the Old Line Corridor N Scale layout on display at White Rose Hobbies now. This layout was featured in Railroad Model Craftsman's Amtrak 50th Anniversary issue.

In recent years Amtrak has begun painting and wrapping its equipment in some of its earlier schemes. You can now find a range of liveries from Phase I running along with Phase VII. From the very beginning Amtrak has been appealing to model railroaders much the same as early Conrail and Burlington Northern due to the ability to mix in a large variety of power and equipment from predecessor roads. With Amtrak's 50th Anniversary comes several specially painted units including motors as well as diesel units. This has led to a spike in the model railroad manufactures announcing and releasing Amtrak equipment in Day 1 schemes to a new Midnight Blue 50th Anniversary scheme.

White Rose Hobbies has some of these items in-stock now and many are in Pre-Order status. Browse our site now:

HO Scale Amtrak model Trains
N Scale Amtrak model Trains

Some of the recent releases from Bachmann Trains include the long distance Siemens ALC-42 Charger in the 50th Anniversary Day 1 scheme as well as the sharp new Phase VI red and blue in HO Scale, and hints on Bachmann's Facebook page show these will also be released in N Scale.

Check out this photo of the new Bachmann ALC-42 model in front of a brand new just built prototype.

To accompany their Amfleet coaches and ACS-64 Sprinters Bachmann has release concrete tied E-Z Track in HO Scale, we expect N Scale to be available in the future. The concrete track looks great and even has the correct tie profile for the high speed rail corridors of the northeast.

The new concrete track is also part of the Amtrak City Sprinter train set expected in the 1st Quarter of 2022 available for Pre-Order with WRH now.

Bachmann Trains have several models available to complete your Amtrak trains from the famed GG1 electrics, not so famed E60 Electrics, the F40PH Diesels, ACS-64 Sprinter Electrics and now the ALC-42 and SC-44 Chargers. They also have produced several types of passenger equipment including Amfleet and Budd Cars. The F59PH diesel as well as aluminum streamlined cars are also available under their Williams brand in O Gauge.

Another model train manufacture with a wide variety of HO and N Scale Amtrak equipment is Kato. They have produced the F40PH and SDP40F diesels, GG1 and ACS-64 Electric Motors to power your long distance as well as high speed commuter trains. In addition to the motive power they have made Amfleet coaches, Superliners, several types of baggage cars and more to transport the nations passengers from point A to B.

Kato's most recent announcements feature P42 diesels in the 50th Anniversary schemes. Photo Credit Matt Donnelly of Amtrak.

White Rose Hobbies has these new P42 models from Kato available for Pre-Order now. They are available DCC Ready or factory equipped with DCC and LokSound. 

The Viewliner II Baggage car is currently available from Kato in N Scale with HO Scale expected in the 1st Quarter of 2022.

Athearn has been making items for Amtrak since their Blue Box days with the SDP40, SW Switchers F Units, and even the AMD103. Many of these models have been re-tooled and offered in the RTR and Genesis model lines. They have also recently released the GP38-2 to power all of your extra and work train moves. The latest offerings from Athearn will be the P42 in the 50th Anniversary heritage schemes giving modelers a choice of theirs or the Kato offering both slated for a 2022 release.