Yeah, the anti-vandal panels we had designed for the Athearn cars were much better than what they created. Ours would have been stainless steel, so the bare metal would have been superior to anything painted.
Still hoping to get the Portec enclosed bi-level racks out someday. 3D-printing has brought them closer to reality and eliminated many of the previous obstacles. The cost of a bending fixture for the body wrapper and the juxtaposition of the fixture or contracting the wrappers to be pre-folded, are still the biggest sticking points. For what it's worth, MTL will be 4C printing the etched-nickel silver body wrappers should the kits ever make it into production. They printed samples of the GTW blue car shortly after they acquired the 4C technology and they look spectacular, and that was back when they were still learning the process. Also had some contractors in the Kingdom print the GTW and ROCK artwork. It looked acceptable but it did not adhere fully to the nickle silver.
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