There is often much conversation on this forum about proto specific, high detail models and how that is what most modelers appear to want these days.
Yet, a number of recently released models are anything but proto specific - and some are from those very companies who would seem to be promoting this trend.
Finally, after many years of promises, BLI has offered a Pacific that is NOT a PRR K4 - thank goodness - or should we thank anyone?
As it turns out, like their USRA Heavy and Light Mikados, the Pacific’s are generic - but in this case the heavy Pacific is not even as accurate as either of the Mikados.
OK, putting a USRA Light Mikado boiler on a 73" driver 4-6-2 drive yields a credible, if not completely accurate USRA Light Pacific.
BUT, putting a USRA Heavy Mikado boiler on that same 73" driver frame does not make a USRA Heavy Pacific - but that is just what Broadway did. The USRA Heavy Pacific had 79" drivers, spaced differently, and had a smaller, (but higher mounted) boiler than the Heavy Mikado.
And in all the road names offered, light or heavy, not one of the smallest or simplest details was changed for greater accuracy. In the B&O green scheme, they could not even put the correct two different Presidents names on the two different road numbers offered - both say “President Washington”?
It would have been so easy to make the B&O locos more correct with a different bell and headlight, and a Delta trailing truck. Other brands have done it.
And while these locos are not at the upper tier of pricing these days, they are by no means in the “bargain” price range either.
I did buy one, which is already being kit bashed to ATLANTIC CENTRAL standards, but I doubt I will buy any more. Had the B&O versions been more correct, and/or the Heavy version been a true 79" driver loco, I might have bought a small fleet.
So, why in this age of “high end proto specific” locos, is it impossi