If someone is happy with the models, that is good and if Athearn sells many of them to make money, that is good also. This is amazing since Athearn has released several of models with great and fairly correct detail for each railroad. I normally do not purchase newer items any longer since I was raised in the steam era but did purchase some of the special detailed models from Athearn recently.
My thought about this type of situation concerns new people in the hobby that have no idea of past history since they are new on do not have books and pictures of the rear railroad. We have seen so many of the new people just into the hobby and are so proud of the new model until they look for pictures of the model to detail or update it. You see it with many of the older Bachmann and other models when they ask specific questions about details and the locomotive was not even used on that railroad.
The good thing is this is a great hobby and we should all enjoy it.
Actually Athearn may have used all the prototype road names and instead of shelving the GP60M(IIRC this is a former Rail Power Product shell) they decided to run a batch of what if locomotives.
As long as they keep the upgrades coming with road specific details then a few “fantasy” road names shouldn’t hurt.
That supped up SW1500 IMHO makes up for the fantasy locomotives…That engine has tons of detail.