Nit pickey, yes, overboard... I say no. And I am not just complaining,
I personally am willing to do something about this to keep it if at
all possible from happening again.
I believe companies like Athearn want their models to be as accurate
as possible. Their is a difference between the "model" companies and
the "toy" companies. Model companies want accuracy. But they certainly
need to do this in a reasonable time frame. Athearn must have done
some homework to get the lettering on the LO-11 correct for an LO-7.
Just the wrong homework. Someone somewhere goofed - either at Athearn
or BRHS or ???? It took me all of 2 minutes to realize there was a
simple, easily correctable mistake with the cars - the dead giveaway
was the build date. This could have been caught and easily corrected
pre-production. It would not require one bit of retooling to have a
virtually perfect prototype car.
For example, I can live with the fact that Athearn's new early PS-2
covered hoppers (Q class HC-2) will not be accurate Q prototypes - the
Q cars had a unique hatch arrangement. I wouldn't expect Athearn to do
a special roof tooling just for the CB&Q cars. That is asking a bit
too much, even to me. I can live with the fact that P2K didn't put a
nose headlight on the CB&Q GP20's. Again, special tooling to for a
limited prototype. We modelers can change that if we want. But if
something isn't a big problem, like lettering, for example, or which
trucks to put on the cars (e.g. roller bearing trucks would go with
the black painted 100t HC-2's) I don't see where that is nit-picky,
especially if it doesn't cost the manufacturer any additional money to
do it right.
I would like to believe the folks at Athearn want their product as
accurate as possible - if they didn't, I doubt they would have spent
the time to do the incredible tooling they did for the ACF 2,970
covered hoppers. I do not believe that mentioning this problem will
cause a manufacturer like Athearn to produce less cars in CB&Q. In
fact, if we can make the research or pre-production check easier on
them, they might actually make more cars in CB&Q! But, yes, I want the
next cars to be right on the money. It will take them only a few
minutes to pop off an e-mail to someone anal about detail like myself
or someone else on this list who cares about these things (not
berating anyone who doesn't) and we "nit-pickers" would be glad to say
- oops, that is LO-7 data, change these four (yes, literally 4)
numbers and you have it exactly right! Oh, and by the way, here is
where you will find the color pictures for your reference! I
understand that not everyone cares, but we do have such a great
eclectic knowleageable group here, we might as well make sure the
manufacturers take advantage of us. (oops, maybe I phrased that the
wrong way...)
What I want to see is better communication between modelers on this
group who want as accurate as possible CB&Q locomotives, cars, etc.
and the manufacturers. I for one am volunteering for late model
freight cars and diesel locomotives. I also am willing to field
questions from other group members on these topics (just as Rupert,
for example, has done a great job compiling a very detailed freight
car number list from old ORERS). Anyone else want to volunteer? We can
then let the manufacturers know who some of us "go-to" folks are. And
the questions we can't answer, I bet we can find the answers from
others on this group! :-)
Tom Mack
Cincinnati, OH
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, William Ewinger <b_ewinger@...> wrote:
>
> maybe if we are were not so nit pickey about how these modles came
from the builder and just accept what they want o build maybe they
will build more for all the by gone roads but to sit and complain
about the minor details here is going over board
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