That's exactly what Kato has done though Max. The Japanese love the West, helped along by Hollywood romanticising it over the years. Plus, if you're a US-railfan in Japan and you bring the family to Disneyland, you're going to go see Cajon and Tehachapi too right? They love the Warbonnet and it's obviously featured heavily in Kato production.
They produced the PA just so Mr Kato could have his own.
Atlas isn't without form here, with the Train Master being a favour for Paul for long-service right?
So some business decisions are (often) made for love.
I don't know about the Trainmaster. Although it was not just a one-road or western-road engine, so
it's appeal would be more wide-spread than a PRR engine. Did it sell well?
As for the PA...
The PA was still a good *business* decision, because the Alco PA-1 was used on a lot of railroads
(including the PRR), and it also was a famous and glamorous engine. So it's likelihood of being a big seller was good.
The real-world production figures were only a few hundred, but that doesn't matter. It had a big presence on many roads,
so it was popular. It also wasn't just a Western-road engine. The idea may have been initially come from
Kato's love of the engine, but putting it into production still made good business sense.
Kato sold tons of those PA's. Also, remember that
the Kato PA came out in a time when nothing in the market ran that good. So an engine running as great as those
early Kato PA's had an advantage over today's model train market, where there are lots of good-running
engines. In other words, many people would buy it just because it was a great-running engine, because there weren't many
of those around, even if they didn't particularly want a PA.
The Kato 4-6-4 Hudson probably also benefitted from that advantage. Heck, I bought one back in 1986 with "Pennsylvania" on the side,
just because I wanted a good-running steam loco.
So where does all this lead?
I agree with you that Kato seems to like to build "glamour" trains.
They do seem to like to build ones that appeal to the Japanese market.
There may be an element of personal interest from the executive staff at Kato, but in the end, they choose engines that
will make a splash because they believe that appeals to their customers Yes, I know they have had a few misses.
Does a PRR steam engine fit any of those motivations? Nope. The GG-1 does. Maybe I could stretch it to imagine them
making a real glamour queen like the T-1 because it was so unusual.
