I think it's a matter of geographical perception. In Maryland, where I live, and the greater surrounding geographical area (northern VA, DC, DE, and southeastern PA) it's rare to see a R cab in motion, as in running. In the last six months I've been watching. I drive an hour each way daily to and from work, and a lot on the side, and I have seen perhaps 15 R cabs in the last half a year. Only one was a tractor (owned by a construction company), the others were all cement, dump and trash container trucks and very well worn. I saw a few other R cabs, which I did not count in this survey because they were being overgrown by weeds. Perhaps the R cabs fare better in Boston (a lot of construction going on up there with the big dig, eh) or in the roadsalt-less southern California where Athearn is based, but even the R's square headlighted replacement is not fairing so well around Baltimore and the new Granite body style is quickly picking up the slack and making up a higher percentage in the body style wars every year. The same has happened with International's 4900s and the Freightliner FL-series trucks over the last 15 years here around Baltimore. Try to model contemporary (that is today, now, 2008) Maryland and use more than one R model on your layout and it makes for an unrealistic scenario, IMHO. I'm not necessarily a rivet counter, but vehicles besides RR locos and rolling stock help build the stage setting for a layout or scene. In many cases, you can get away with older vehicles, but not as the majority of vehicles in a scene.
