man or man are you guys rough!!!!! Ok by me, as I have had similar frustration over the years with several models myself.
One of the more memorable frustrations was the Minitrix Pennsy steamers. The K4 for back then was a relatively faithful rendition of the early prototype, and even had separate grab rails, tender pickup, and a decent mechanism. I have owned over the years because I am a died in the wool Pennsy modeler, about 20 of them plus another 20 of the decapods (yikes, horrors) and the 0-6-0 steam switcher.
The decals and lettering on them was borderline terrible to horrid. Cheap white paint in the wrong font. Why devote so much time to the molding and then blow it on the most obvious exterior aesthetic, the lettering? Later in the life, ConCor tried to resurrect and correct the K4 with the collector set, and corrected lettering and paint, but by then other steamers were regaling in their respective glories.
Over the years, I have spent quite a bit of money upgrading and correcting my K4's with MicroScale decals, adding keystones to the front of the boiler, painting the smokebox graphite or silver, painting the tender deck and cab roof with primer which drastically improved their appearance worthy of the time and effort that Trix made to the mechanism and molding.
Since then I have had my frustrations and issues with several manufacturers at their half hearted or incorrect attempts to duplicate livery, and tried to compensate myself with the fact that they often included guesswork, like looking at photos, or viewing a repainted prototype, or just getting opinions of selected people, often which were a little bit off.
I can commisserate with you guys out there with frustrations particularly when the errors appear on your home lines, but #@$#@$#@ happens, and more $$#%% seems to happen in N than in other scales, which explains in part our outrage.
I see both sides but because I have felt your pain, I am siding with you. It seems that due diligence was paid to making the mechanism well and the cab shell correct, but less than due diligence to duplicating livery, which is the most obvious part.
As I have seen over the years, you can count on that every manufactuer worth his salt reads all of the major forums for feedback, and weed out the nut cases and read the intelligent well articulated feedback and on subsequent reissues make the necessary corrections. I can say that because at times I have been branded both by some manufacturers based on several dynamics of my rant. Remember even Kato corrected its first terrible paint blunder of all time, the GN F3A and even offered a free exchange for postage only.
Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
