Although I am a big Big Boy fan, I can only possibly use 25 of 'em! I'm not there yet, and I don't have plans to achieve that prototype amount, but obviously there's a market for them and since there are still real ones available to document and crawl all over.
Sure there are other steam engines I would love to see being made other than more Big Boys, but I'm not complaining about the Big Boys. And, I wish financial success for the companies who are taking the time and effort to produce good-running models of this iconic steam engine...that still runs on UP trackage in 2022.
There's a good probability that Kato's will be specifically of the excursion version of the 4014, so it can accurately pull Kato passenger cars. I doubt they will make models of the Big Boy as it was in service, with an actual Big Boy tender rather than a Challenger tender behind it like is being pulled by the prototype 4014 today. But, maybe they'll surprise me.
I'm reserving my opinion of the BLI model, but I hope they'll put some effort into manufacturing a quality, excellent running model of both the excursion 4014 and in-service 4000's.
Discouraging to me is the obvious monkey-motion articulation that will be used on both models so they can run on sharp curves, just like the Athearn models. Gotta have it to sell more of 'em...I get it, but....I don't like it. It wouldn't be that difficult to produce a conversion kit for those of us who have sufficiently wide minimum mainline radii on our layouts to run a properly articulated Big Boy model.
As for the TTG schemes from BLI...no worse than Kato TTG's being custom painted with other numbers than 844 or 8444 or TTG Athearn Challengers being available in TTG but still with ash pans under the firebox. Just wish they'd get the firebox tones correct.
As for the next locomotive I want to see....not steam, but a Scale Trains Veranda Turbine Rivet Counter Version...yeah! I'll acquire five of them too.
I assume that since the initial run of Scale Trains' Standard Turbine was instantly sold out and now are selling on eBay for over a thousand bucks a shot, a run of Verandas would be a sure thing profit-wise.
Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore
