Some insight from a O gauge friend about paint schemes on RR items. Bill and I tease each other about 2 rail vs. 3 rail track, reason why he mentions the track.
As I said before, Lionel puts out things the way they do to sell more of a item due to eye appeal. Mike Mike, Folks seem to lose sight of the fact that Lionel is not a model train manufacturer. They are a TOY train manufacturer that sometimes may make scale model cars and engines. Scale model in the true sense means scale couplers, scale wheels, scale dimensions, scale paint schemes, and, as we keep beating up on, 2 rail track. I can't get excited over people taking Lionel to task for something that they are not nor do they pretend to be! If you are a scale model (nut) that has to have their trains be prototypical reality, then yes, I guess you can get upset over Lionel producing an engine with a paint scheme when that railroad never used that particular engine........ As you say, they are not targeting this to the modeler market..... Don't buy it if you don't like it! I am not a scale modeler. I buy what I like. The real world is not what I am trying to reproduce or emulate. Having fun, real or imaginary, is what gives me pleasure. Everyone gets to define what fun & pleasure means to them - it's a highly personal thing! So yes - historical info is an input to what Lionel does, but it does not limit them in what they produce. I like to think of Lionel producing toy trains in the same way that authors write novels - it may sound real and incorporate real elements but the story is still imaginary and not real! That's my 2 cents and I'm sticking with it!
