 Hi, this is Jeff Schultz with Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine here at the 2012 National Train Show in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here with me is Shane Wilson of Horizon Hobby. He's the general product manager for Athern Trains. So Shane, you really knocked one out of the park in January at Springfield with the new GP38-2 introduction, the road name specific details and all. What have you got for us this year at the National Train Show? Well, thanks for the kind words, Jeff. We're really excited. One of our strategy changes is to make announcements at major shows like this. And here at the 2012 National Train Show, we've got a couple of surprises. Our first one is an all-new 57-foot FGE mechanical reefer. Of course, this has never been done in mass production plastic before. What's kind of unique about this is we're doing an as-delivered version as well as a modernized version. The as-delivered, you can actually see the gen set inside of the screens. And then for the modernized version, it has the cutaway roof with the new carrier refrigeration unit inside. We've also made a couple of detail changes depending on the prototype. You'll find welded side or riveted side as well as a fish belly sill or a standard straight sill. One of the unique things that we're doing though that's new for us and really hasn't been done much in our industry is bringing sound to freight cars. So with the mechanical reefer, we have two sounds recorded. One for the gen set sound, which is the early sound, and one for the carrier refrigeration sound. And it'll be available both with and without sound. So if you wanted to make a large train, you wouldn't necessarily have to buy all sound but still get that effect. And it's a random chip, so it'll cycle on and off just like a real refrigeration unit. And these will be shipping in April of next year. That's our goal. And what are we estimating the price for both the non and sound versions to be? The non-sound version is going to be $44.98. And then the sound version will be $79.98. One thing I should mention too, these are not DCC. They're just traditional. It's a cycle sound that comes on and off, so you can run on a DC layout or a DCC layout either way. And is there any programmability to the sound, or is it just a fixed random and fixed whatever sound you get is what you get? Yeah, it's a random on and off. So it'll cycle through just like a regular refrigeration would when the temperature came down. It would cycle back on. Kind of the same idea. And what prototypes do you expect to be releasing this for? So for the first run, we're going to do the as delivered in three road names, which is Fruit Growers Express, FGE Solid Cold, and BNFE. And then we'll do the modernized versions in BNSF and UP ARMN. And we expect the first run in April and the second run about when? Probably about 90 days after that. Okay. That's for eight cars. You have anything else for us? Well, there's been a lot of questions. Well, our Facebook page and our email box has been flooded the last several months asking what we're going to do about the Norfolk Southern Heritage Series. So we are going to, we're announcing three locomotives here at the National Train Show. As everyone knows, we have the as delivered version of the SD70 ACE. A couple of our folks from the R&D team went out to Spencer, North Carolina for the unveiling. And we learned a lot. And we realized that our current, our SD70 ACE that we make now is not like the ones that are coming out of the factory. In fact, we identified 12, we'll call them visual differences between our early ACE and the current one. So what we're going to do is we're going to make all the tooling updates for those 12 changes. Some are subtle. Some are really big visual spotting differences. And then we're also going to do, you may have seen Norfolk Southern number 1030, which is the 30th anniversary locomotive. That's actually a mid production SD70 ACE. So it's got some, some things from the original ACE, as well as some features of the new ACE that's just coming off. And we're going to make those tooling changes as well. So we'll have an early, a mid and a late production SD70 ACE. And then, you know, we're still talking about what we're going to do with the ES44AC, the Givo. We are going to, of course, announce Givo's probably later this year as our plan. The tooling that we acquired from Tower 55 is the early version Givo. And it really didn't have, it wasn't made to make the changes to become a mid or a late production Givo. So literally we would be able to use the mechanism, but we'd need to do an all new cab, all new long hood. So that's a pretty sizable financial investment as well as a time commitment. And we know folks are pretty excited about this from all the emails and all the questions we've received. So what we're going to do is we're going to take the GE AC4400 and apply the ES44 schemes to it. And the great thing there is it'll help keep the price point down. And we can deliver those in time for Christmas this year. So how much should we be saving up by Christmas? Well, of course there'll be ten road names. So that means that there'll be one, those are going to retail at $139.99. So a little bit before Christmas. And that's $139.99 is a non-sound version? The AC4400 is in our ready to roll line. So yeah, it would only be non-sound. Okay. The ready to roll line, does it have the ability to add a speaker without carving out anything? You know, on the AC4400, there's space there. But of course it would take a little bit to put, it's not really like a drop in sound unit. Okay. And what does the pricing look like on the SD70s for next summer? Well, that's one of the good news here is even though we're making all of these tooling changes, we're going to maintain the same price point. So the non-sound version will be $199.98 and with the tsunami sound inside it'll be $299.98. And so should we expect now that you'll have tooling for three different phases of the SD70s, that you'll continue to release updated road names and or road numbers for all three different versions? Absolutely. And we're incorporating some other tooling changes too that'll actually give us some other road names that we'll be announcing down the road as well. Excellent. Is there anything else you've got for us? Well, you know, we'll have more. Look for some more new announcements at Train Fest, followed by Springfield next year. And we've got one of the great things is, and I know there's been a lot of questions, Jeff, about where Athens at with our tooling. We are almost ready to go back into production, which is really good news. We'll be shipping freight cars before the end of the year, along with the original AC-4400s. You'll see some out of production AC-4400s come back in. Most RTR locomotives will be after the first of the year, but we'll be in full swing here pretty quick with production. And we have so much exciting stuff planned. You know, we sat down a few weeks ago and we literally planned the next five years. And for the next two and a half years where the show is, we know exactly what our plans are. So hopefully we can keep it on track in that time period. You know, things will slip a little bit, but we'll have a lot of great things for folks in the coming years. Well, for cars to five-year plan, you've got my email address. Thank you. Okay, that sounds really good. And it looks like we're gonna get a whole lot of announcements out of you guys in the next couple of years, especially with the tooling restarts. There's a lot planned. You know, there's a lot more locomotives, a lot more freight cars. And I'm sure we'll have a couple of big surprises here in the not too distant future. Any hints towards non-rail, meaning structures or anything like that? Nothing in our plans right now, probably not. Okay. Well, that should do it then. Shannon, I'd like to thank you for coming here for the interview. And I hope you have a really good time at the show. Thanks Jeff, really appreciate the opportunity and have a wonderful show as well. Thank you. This is Jeff Schultz for Model Railroad Hobbius Magazine here at the 2012 National Train Show in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Thank you.