Kato's Anti-Eastern Bias

[bbussey]

And UP and BNSF and GN!

[Puddington]

NEWS FLASH: There were other railroads besides PRR and PC!

YOU SIR; CAN NOT PROVE THAT SO GO WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT WITH A PRR SUPPLIED SOAP

The PRRPC Society of Revisionist History - All Rights Reserved  ;D

[Dave V]

NEWS FLASH: There were other railroads besides PRR and PC!

True...  There was Conrail.  Thanks for setting me straight!  ;D

[Puddington]

And UP and BNSF and GN!

One supposes you have not kept your subscription up to "All you need to know about North Amercian Railroading" by Kato.......................

[lashedup]

NEWS FLASH: There were other railroads besides PRR and PC!

Jerry Britton is twitching badly somewhere out there...

[Rossford Yard]

Just for grins, I do remember when I first came on these boards that many complained that Atlas picked too many eastern roads, because their staff was supposedly just making what they needed for their layouts!

I also think Kato's emphasis on proto fidelity, and thus several paint jobs on the SD40-2's in ATSF and BNSF derivatives may have shaped their road name choices.  As mentioned, there may be too many eastern variations among greater numbers of parent roads that merged into larger systems.

For that matter, there is just more of the west (Chicago being the split) than there is east, although, I am told that the largest share of our population still lives on the east coast between Washington DC and Boston.  So, it may not be a matter of numbers of modelers.

It may also be a factor of when Kato started in the N scale american loco biz - about 1988.  At the time, there was still and SP, UP, and SF out west.  Conrail was not a popular modeling choice in the east then - still mourning all the long gone roads that made it up.  CSX had just been created, and I am not sure many cared to model that.  Ditto NS, which I think has always been under modeled.  So, their early offerings sold well if in western schemes and not as well in the eastern schemes.  They did add back in those eastern schemes as modelers embraced them, perhaps because time marches on and many model what they see.

Lastly, I wonder what % of moderlers stick with one road totally?  I switched to N and figured to have the locos I wanted, I would model Cajon Pass, konwing it would grow and grow in offerings, but not wanting to wait for all the off roads and locos to be offered.  In other words, I surrendered to what the mfgs made and that was the western roads.

Anyone else pick era and road based on what you could get, rather than what you really, really, really wanted?

[JDouglasFisher]

At the risk of pissing everyone off, and perhaps being banned from the board for the following remarks, I must say,

model railroading has a bunch of spoiled brats these days.

I remember as a kid (I'm 35, so I'm not old yet) being raised in a single parent home, with a mother who really, really encouraged the hobby (how cool was that) that I couldn't afford the latest offerings from Atlas. But I could afford the 20 buck or so Athearns. Athearn produced many paint schemes, but not all, and I learned the art of air brushing models after reading dozens of articles on the topic.

In fact, after using the 3rd can of "badger air" (do they even sell that?) my air supply system changed to that of a full size spare tire and an adapter. Although I never truly knew what air pressure I was painting with, I could eyeball it by needling the valve up and down till the Floquil flowed just right from the tip. The only downside was when the tire went soft, all painting had to stop, and I had to re-air up courtesy of the 12volt tire compressor, filling it to 100 lbs. (way dangerous, lol, but it worked. No guts, no glory, right?)

I also remember that Athearns ran rough out of the box, unlike Kato's SD40 in HO scale at the time, but there were many books regarding tuning Athearns, and I must've burned through a couple tubes of Pearl Drops tooth paste polishing those gears. With a couple hours work on the driveline, you could "almost" match the running quality of a Kato with a low-buck Athearn drive. When I say almost, the only thing you couldn't match was the very slow crawl a Kato can do, but crawling 12 inches in an hour, is THAT ability really necessary in the model world? I think not.

Point here is that back when I was younger, and into HO, I was schooled in the art of "BUILDING IT YOURSELF". Sadly, today everyone has gotten so spoiled with Ready to Run that whenever a locomotive produced isn't offered in a particular road's paint scheme, everyone goes crying foul and having a fit, instead of sucking it up, breaking out the airbrush, MANNING UP, and resolving the issue yourself.

Your seeking a legitimate complaint? Complain that decals are hard to come by. Complain that detail parts are hard to come by. Complain that the availability of undecs makes modeling hard to come by. Don't complain because you can't get a specific locomotive in a particular, obscure paint scheme that perhaps you, and about 20 other modelers will actually purchase.

I fear we don't have "Model Railroaders" anymore, but rather a bunch of folks who just buy it off the shelf and play with trains.

I stand by my opinion, regardless of how unpopular it is.

J.....

[lock4244]

I also think Kato's emphasis on proto fidelity, and thus several paint jobs on the SD40-2's in ATSF and BNSF derivatives may have shaped their road name choices.  As mentioned, there may be too many eastern variations among greater numbers of parent roads that merged into larger systems.

And they did a CN unit sub lettered for the IC, yet not an actual IC unit!? I've no use for one personally, but it would seem logical to do one (I understand logic doesn't always factor into it).

Anyone else pick era and road based on what you could get, rather than what you really, really, really wanted?

Nope. Like many, I've gone with the prototypes I saw growing up.

[Rossford Yard]

Lock,

I think logic goes into it, but that we don't always understand it.......

As to IC, I recall Atlas cancelling an IC or IGG run due to lack of sales. I don't recall the timing of the releases, but maybe Kato was influenced by the general lack of enthusiam for the IC when deciding to do a CN with sublettering?  Presumably, the IC sub lettering was to make the CN unit prototypical?  Don't really know.

I say all that, and as an IHB modeler (to get as many roads packed on to my layout as possible) a new look IC unit would be way cool and useable, not to mention, I prefer the Kato locos for their running quality, although I do have many Atlas.

[John]

True...  There was Conrail.  Thanks for setting me straight!  ;D

The operative word being - WAS

[Rossford Yard]

The more I think about this, the more I think we should look at it as being very happy that Atlas is moving beyond the "big roads only" mentality.

While both Kato and Atlas are run by modelers, who bring their own "biases" (or experience and interests) to their products.

They should be senstitive to our desires, is it any wonder that the US based company, focusing on the US market is more sensitive?  I don't know how Kato's worldwide business affects their thinking, but as to the US market, they simply seem stuck in an older mode of selling only the most popular roadnames, whereas Atlas has made an effort to expand offerings to less known roads, knowing they will only sell at best a few hundred of each.

While that move is great for us, we don't know if it will prove economically sustainable, and continue.  Nor should we necessarily expect that ALL mfgs follow down that specific path.

In a way, Kato has, but only for iconic, one off trains with new tooling, rather than "oddball" paint schemes of existing tooling.  I do suspect that it is a result of Mr. Kato's own personal interest in railroading and its iconic features, over mundane models.  The model railroading community is fortunate to have different mfgs that pursue different agendas in that we get a wider variety of products.

Until rapid prototyping allows really small runs of proto specific models, we will have to be content.  That day will probably come, but it hasn't yet.

[Rossford Yard]

Working my way into a rant..... ;D, but,

I wonder how long it will take for someone to chastise Kato for not really doing "pre-orders" to determine if there is a real need for CR, CSX and NS C-30-7 or other remakes?  It would be funny, because the same pre-order system used by others is under attack over in the Atlas forums right now (or was recently)

In this case, if Kato knew via pre-order that they could sell their minimum 300 units of those Eastern Roads, it might be worth their while to make them, but that's not how they roll, preferring to announce and deliver, sticking to what they know.

[bbussey]

... It may also be a factor of when Kato started in the N scale american loco biz - about 1988.  At the time, there was still and SP, UP, and SF out west.  Conrail was not a popular modeling choice in the east then - still mourning all the long gone roads that made it up.  CSX had just been created, and I am not sure many cared to model that.  Ditto NS, which I think has always been under modeled.  So, their early offerings sold well if in western schemes and not as well in the eastern schemes.  They did add back in those eastern schemes as modelers embraced them, perhaps because time marches on and many model what they see...

I don't know about that.  Kato-USA was very "equal opportunity" when it started, possibly due to the "Atlas influence" since they had been a subcontractor for the previous seven-or-so years.  And, unlike Penn Central, Conrail was pretty warmly embraced from the beginning.  Kato released Conrail schemes on most of their early units, and many of Conrail's predecessor roads as well.  It was around the turn of the century that they might have become more "UP-centric" for a time.  But in recent years, the focus new-tooling-wise has been on specific prototypes.  If the Broadway Limited would sell at the same pace as the Zephyr, Daylight and the Santa Fe trains, we would see more Pennsy -- including the BM70M as a separate item.  The GG-1 sells very well, which is why we continue to see new schemes released on that model.  They keep adding new Amtrak models -- how many baggage cars are there now?  And, even though it helps recoup Broadway tooling costs, it's still gutsy to release a Penn Central passenger set.

I wish Kato released more eastern stuff also, but to say there is specifically an anti-eastern bias really doesn't stand up under scrutiny.

[Denver Road Doug]

model railroading has a bunch of spoiled brats these days.

I remember as a kid (I'm 35, so I'm not old yet) being raised in a single parent home, with a mother who really, really encouraged the hobby (how cool was that) that I couldn't afford the latest offerings from Atlas. But I could afford the 20 buck or so Athearns. Athearn produced many paint schemes, but not all, and I learned the art of air brushing models after reading dozens of articles on the topic.

In fact, after using the 3rd can of "badger air" (do they even sell that?) my air supply system changed to that of a full size spare tire and an adapter. Although I never truly knew what air pressure I was painting with, I could eyeball it by needling the valve up and down till the Floquil flowed just right from the tip. The only downside was when the tire went soft, all painting had to stop, and I had to re-air up courtesy of the 12volt tire compressor, filling it to 100 lbs. (way dangerous, lol, but it worked. No guts, no glory, right?)

I also remember that Athearns ran rough out of the box, unlike Kato's SD40 in HO scale at the time, but there were many books regarding tuning Athearns, and I must've burned through a couple tubes of Pearl Drops tooth paste polishing those gears. With a couple hours work on the driveline, you could "almost" match the running quality of a Kato with a low-buck Athearn drive. When I say almost, the only thing you couldn't match was the very slow crawl a Kato can do, but crawling 12 inches in an hour, is THAT ability really necessary in the model world? I think not.

Point here is that back when I was younger, and into HO, I was schooled in the art of "BUILDING IT YOURSELF". Sadly, today everyone has gotten so spoiled with Ready to Run that whenever a locomotive produced isn't offered in a particular road's paint scheme, everyone goes crying foul and having a fit, instead of sucking it up, breaking out the airbrush, MANNING UP, and resolving the issue yourself.

Your seeking a legitimate complaint? Complain that decals are hard to come by. Complain that detail parts are hard to come by. Complain that the availability of undecs makes modeling hard to come by. Don't complain because you can't get a specific locomotive in a particular, obscure paint scheme that perhaps you, and about 20 other modelers will actually purchase.

I fear we don't have "Model Railroaders" anymore, but rather a bunch of folks who just buy it off the shelf and play with trains.

Well, way off topic but....

It seems like there are a lot of pretty considerable "if's" that we're supposed to ignore here.   Yes, IF we could get undecs and IF the decals were available and IF paint was still as cheap and easy to come by and IF we had a SAFE painting setup and IF and IF and IF.   I would LOVE to paint more, but I live in an apartement and the effort to do so without being able to use a compressor just isn't worth the extra effort right now for me...someday, yes but in the meantime...I'm the poster boy for RTR.

I think that the "off the shelf" phenomenon is NOT mutually exclusive to being a model railroader.  Some of us just enjoy different aspects of the hobby.  Rarely do you see a model railroader that...
-Develops a detailed CAD-assisted track plan with 3D renedering and exhaustive testing via computer modeling AND
-Builds professional-grade benchwork that is lightweight, study, and meets building and fire codes to the T AND
-Custom cuts roadbed and grades everything out with a laser level AND
-Hand cuts individual ties AND
-Hand Lays track and turnouts AND
-Custom crushes homemade ballast from actual pieces of ballast "borrowed" from the right of way AND
-Weathers the track and ROW according to actual footage of said components of the real railroad AND
-Creates mind-blowing scenery using the latest techniques and top of the line tools and materials AND
-Kitbashes/scratchbuilds locomotives that are 95% or better phase and detail specific AND
-Fine tunes the locomotives to the extreme AND
-Installs complete lighting and sound packages in every locomotive AND
-Superdetails, custom paints, and does professional-grade weathering on every piece of rolling stock AND
-Has 500 locomotives and 5,000 cars. AND
-Has only fully superdetailed, weathered, lighted-interior structures, with sound AND
-Has computerized detection, signalling, and train monitoring (transponding or similar) for every locomotive and piece of rolling stock AND
-Has computer control capabality including remote users utilizing on layout webcams and electormagnetic uncoupling AND
-Creates a authentic operating scheme and has the capability to host frequent operating sessions AND
-Has a completely finished/furnished layout room, with adjacent crew lounge, shop room, restroom facilities, and "crew quarters" AND
-Does everything all by himself AND
-Has a day job AND
-Isn't independently wealthy AND
-Shall I go on?

My (lengthy) point is....yes, some of us want RTR locomotives and cars...at least with some level of authenticity...for starters.  This means the difference of being in the hobby or not for many.   You simply cannot do EVERYTHING and expect to ever have a layout that remotely resembles something nice.   There just aren't enough hours in the life.

And oh, by the way, YOU want that as well.  Because the more that can get their feet wet in this hobby, the more interest there is, and the more product is purchased, and thus prices can stay as far away from the atmosphere as possible.

[Scottl]

Quite a range of opinions!  After reading a variety of posts here for about a month, there sure seems to be a lot of expectations about new models, certain paint schemes, and reasonable cost.  That equation is difficult to balance, but on balance, I would say we are in the golden era of n-scale RTR.  The only Kato locomotive I have owned ran like a Swiss watch, so I am quite willing to tolerate their choices of paint schemes.

Strangely, before this post, I always asked myself why Atlas had such a bias towards those little, fallen flag Eastern railroads!   

New guy submits reply, expecting a) everyone ignores his post or b) they carry out the forum-equivalent of a lynching.  Pressing the send button...