I think that Tedee gets the point and Vapo doesn't.
As I said before, I will reiterate - when the 7MM Remington Express came out, two things happened. First it was not widely accepted as a good hunting round in the USA for two reasons.
The first was that we had just gotten out of a World War and people associated Metric Calibers with the enemy's that we had just fought against. Most patriotic Americans didn't want anything to do with those Metric Calibers or the people we had to fight to keep our freedom. So the 7MM Remington Express never sold well.
The second reason why it never did well was because we already had a .270 and a 30-06 which would both do a excellent job and both rounds were as cheap as or cheaper then the 7MM Remington Express.
Again, you have to remember that the only thing that got the good old USA out of the Great Depression was WW II.
The people who lived through the depression had to learn how to save their money for a rainy day and it didn't make much sense to them to buy something that wasn't any better then what they already had. Most people had only one shotgun and one rifle and one .22 and that was all the guns that they needed.
Firearms manufactures - in order to sell more firearms, has to have some sort of gimmick that will attract new customers, some thing that will convince the customer that this new gun is several times better then what they already have. A must own gun of some sort that will do everything from soup to nuts.
With Remington it was everything from the 25-06 to the 35 Wheelen, which were all based all the 30-06 Govt shell.
By the way either way you look at it. The 30-06 is based off the 50 BMG or the 50 BMG is based off the 30-06 Govt, because if you took a blueprint of either cartridge and enlarged or reduced it - it would be exactly the same from one to the other.
Some of our early rockets and jet aircraft was also modeled after the 50 caliber bullet because we knew that it was capable of traveling faster then the speed of sound.
So the only thing that you need to realize is that when the 7 MM Remington Express came out in 1957, bullet construction was not what it is today. Sometimes you needed a special gun for hunting big game and sometimes you needed a magnum caliber for hunting big game back then. Most peoples thoughts were that if a little bullet was good that a big bullet is even better.
I see that it has not changed much in the past 50 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.280_Remington
What you need to realize is that the 30-06 was originally designed for the 220 gr bullet. The reason why they specified such a large bullet was because in 1903 when the gun was being tested and designed, there were people still alive who fought in the war between the states - or as we like to call it, the war of northern aggression. That whole war was fought with big over sized punkin balls which didn't just penetrate human flesh, it removed whole sections of bone - which lead to so many deaths and so many people loosing arms and legs. The only thing that those old timers understood was a large projectile. Later when it was found that better accuracy could be had by reducing the size of the bullet to 150 gr, that became the industry standard.
The same could be said for the .280
If the .270 is known to have its best accuracy using a 130 gr bullet, how much larger of a bullet are you going to have to use in a .280 to get the same accuracy. Probably 140 gr..
Again, someone here is missing the point.
As the bullet gets larger - it has to go someplace, because there is a limit as to how much bullet you can have past the rim of the shell. This forces the re loader to push the bullet back further into the shell which displaces some room inside of the shell which is used to hold the powder. The .280's advantage is that the shoulder was pushed forward so it could not be chambered in either the .270 Winchester or the 30-06 govt. This gave the shell a little bit more room, which along with a different powder gave it the energy it needed, even if you wanted to shoot a 170 gr bullet out of it.
If all we had to work with was a plain old lead ball - this would be a big concern. But because of the newer style bullets which has everything from special gilding materials to special cores which helps the bullet retain its shape and energy - even after it has penetrated the carcass of the animal we are shooting, there is no reason to be loading up with a bigger bullet that isn't going to do anything except make the round less accurate.