# Pullman ships RhB Panorama Cars



## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

ESU/Pullman has finally shipped the first of the RhB Panorama cars they announced in February 2017.
No, this is not a typo - it took over a year from the original announcement.

The original announced ship date was end of second quarter 2017 and the ship date just kept getting pushed out a quarter at a time.

ESU bought the tooling for the cars from Kiss; they are basically the Kiss RhB Panorama cars but with a number of improvements.

There are 12 different cars of two different eras with first and second class cars with different road numbers for each era.

Improvements include:
- Trucks were redesigned with new tooling to reflect the correct type for each era
- Current pick-up improved over the one used by Kiss which was essentially the Aristocraft method
- More elaborate and detailed interior
- Each car includes a decoder to control the lights and the lit destination board


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Just curious, what is the Aristocraft method?

passenger cars use metal ferrules in the journals, some cars use carbon brushes, the locos use a ball bearing riding on the axle.

They look like nice cars to enjoy scenery.

Greg


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Greg,

Years ago there was a short lived activity to have Aristocraft distribute the Kiss products in North America.
These Kiss cars are quite expensive, so every effort was made to keep the cost down and one of those is what in Germany is called the "Aristocraft method".
The saving was to only pick up power on only one side of each truck which turned out to be rather unreliable going over switches and crossings with a plastic frog.

The first image shows the "Aristocraft method", the second one the method Kiss used before - pretty primitive but at least there was a pick up point on each wheel on each of the trucks.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

OK, gotcha, yes I do not like that method, which was used in the later years on aristo tenders and passenger cars.

Initially, Aristo locos had all wheel pickup, and over the years steamers lost the pilot and trailing truck pickups, and tenders went from all wheel to "half the wheels"... this was not viewed as progress by most.

Greg - 84


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

What I forgot to mention is that these cars were 300.- Euros each at the time.
For that money people expected proper ball-bearing pick-ups on at least two axles - that's basically what LGB does on their expensive cars.


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