Have any of you folks ever bought an engine or rolling stock only to find later that it’s either way off on the actual appearance of the real thing, or that it never actually existed at all… It’s really a big let down-especially when you have a lot of money tied up in it.
I have a friend that recently purchased what was supposed to be an early version of the Santa Fe Super Chief, including an E 8/9 A & B unit set and a full consist of silver “smooth side” cars. It’s a beautiful train, but as far as we can find, no such train like it ever existed…
Anybody out there ever had anything like that happen to them ?.
Sorry about your misfortune. If your trying to be true to prototypical models you should do a little reasearch before you make a purchase. I have had that experience a few times in my early modeling days.
You will find that just about every piece of model rolling stock and locomotive is sold in Santa Fe colors, even though SF might never have owned or ran that paticular equipment…due to the fact that the Santa Fe is so popular.
This is especially true of older model makers…almost every model diesel locomotive will come in Santa Fe Warbonnet colors…
Your best bet is to do a little “net” time reserch for a good roster of the old SF equipment…then compare before buying…
Ed
This is very true. Take for example the Santa Fe/Southern Pacific paint scheme that went over like a lead balloon. They were orange and yellow, and had a big yellow SP on each side. Though only a limited number of these were actually painted in the real world, as soon as word got out, the model train manufacturers started turning them out. I still see one every now and then collecting dust in some hobby shop that’s been marked down so many times that they’re all but giving it away.
That also brings to mind the odd ball collectors cars that never really existed, but look cool to people that don’t know any better and are more than willing to buy them. Correctness has been tossed to the wind. If candy striped peppermint flavored monkey wrenches were in demand, companies would turn them out by the thousands… It’s all about M-O-N-E-Y…
That’s right. They were geared for high speed and relatively light trains. That said, experience in the mountains was that they were outpulled by the F’s and PA’s, not just on ATSF, but also on GN and SP. Note that the ATSF and GN transcons all got the F’s when they became available enough quantities, and the E’s got sent back to the flatlands.
Yea. I didn’t really mean to start duplicate topics under different headings, but that seems to be the way it went. One was supposed to be about my friend’s so called
SF Super Chief and the other about poor quality copies of rolling stock. Oh well. I learned a lesson didn’t I…
Then there are the cases of one experimental locomotive being the prototype for tens of thousands of models: Example: The PRR steam turbine S-2, (6-8-6)
Lionel model?