MT Meatpacker Series

[peteski]

Brokemoto brought back the "december MT releases" thread (now locked) with the following post:

I generally buy any thirty four foot refrigerator that MT offers for my nineteenth century pike.  Yes, I know, most of the paint schemes are from the 1920s and 1930s, but I go more for a suggestion of the nineteenth century than one hundred per cent prototype accuracy.  Smaller, wood cars and truss rods suggest the nineteenth century.

This time around, I went to order the meatpacker car and noticed that it was forty feet and not thirty four.  Does anyone know why MT switched gears?  Or care?

I have been buying these cars myself. I like to respond. I'm not sure why he is upset.   AFAIK, nowhere in their ads MT mentioned that this series would consist solely of 34' reefers.  Or strictly beef or chicken or turkey or pork.  It is a series of colorful billboard cars depicting meat packing industry of the early 20th Century.

Brokemoto: I think that you simply assumed something and now you are upset at something that is not MT's fault.  From what I've seen so far, MT is basing their decorating choices on photos in a book titled "Billboard Refrigerator Cars".  They aren't limiting themselves just to 36' reefers.  But nothing says that the next car won't be a 36 footer. 

Now if they messed up the car body type or the paint scheme or lettering was incorrect, that would be a perfect reason to kvetch! 

[sirenwerks]

Now if they messed up the car body type or the paint scheme or lettering was incorrect, that would be a perfect reason to kvetch! 

Now, by messed up the car body, do you mean putting the wrong paint job on a distinctly wrong car body?  If that's the case, don't get me started...

IMRC is one of the biggest perps, slapping meat reefer schemes on its PFE R40-23 prototype ice reefer, but MTL's right behind it doing the same, when most of these cars should be appearing on a General American-style design with the horizontal rivet strip.  'Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up... 

[bbussey]

If you're taking about a situation where a manufacturer is putting an incorrect scheme on a bodystyle when it has another bodystyle in its product line that is prototypically correct for the scheme, then you have a legitimate beef.  But it is unreasonable to expect manufacturers to have a bodystyle for every specific railroad prototype, no matter how popular some of the prototypes might be.  If a manufacturer already offers a steel 40' ice reefer based on a specific prototype, it makes little sense for it to offer another steel 40' ice reefer from the same era.  While there are various steel 40' ice reefers available in N scale, none of them are the same prototype.  Having duplicate models of the same prototype is worse than a model not existing of a specific prototype, because duplicate models restrict sales, which slows development of additional models.

With MTL and IMRC both offering prototypical models of specific (but different) prototypes, you can't validly hit them for not tooling an ART or GARE steel reefer, in my opinion.  You always have the option of not buying the paint schemes you consider to be non-prototypical on specific bodystyles.

[Chris333]

then you have a legitimate beef. 

 

[brokemoto]

I was not upset, unhappy or perturbed.  I was simply curious.  Does anyone know why they did it, or care?

[peteski]

I was not upset, unhappy or perturbed.  I was simply curious.  Does anyone know why they did it, or care?

Unless Shipsure chimes-in here, with some inside info, I simply think that people responsible for making the choice just looked through the book I mentioned, and picked twelve interesting looking cars.   They might have also considered which cars in the photos would be close enough to the car bodies they produce. I don't think that the car length (34' vs. 40') was used in the decision process as to which models to produce.

[VonRyan]

I needs me all the eastern correct woodside reefers. Keep yer steel reefers. Wood is the way.
Does it really matter as to how the body looks. They all look the same unless they are 36' as opposed to 40'.
The pain schemes look Amazeballs as is.

-Cody F.

[sirenwerks]

With MTL and IMRC both offering prototypical models of specific (but different) prototypes, you can't validly hit them for not tooling an ART or GARE steel reefer, in my opinion.  You always have the option of not buying the paint schemes you consider to be non-prototypical on specific bodystyles.

Bryan, you misinterpret my complaint.  I'm not perturbed that they don't make the correct body style (though, honestly, I wish someone would), it is that they flood the market with the schemes on the wrong car.  If they decide not to make a real body style closer to the prototype, fine, but don't flood the market with foobs; the me-first-close-enoughness of such a move minimizing the likelihood of a manufacturer making the correct car, thinking the markets been pissed away with a small market made smaller by money spent on foob cars.  It's a fair assumption of the latter.  Worse, such behavior makes the decal manufacturers shy about doing schemes that someone could apply to their own scratchbash, from what I've been told by opinion leaders.  So while the ignorants are blissed out with the candy, the rest of us get a double dose of no.

[bbussey]

I understand.  But manufacturers gotta pay the rent also.  If they offer most or all the prototypical schemes (which both MTL and IMRC have on their respective models), it's not unreasonable to expect non-prototypical schemes to help amortize the tooling and allow new models to be introduced down the road.  If a manufacturer has a prototypical model and offers a bunch of non-prototypical schemes before offering any prototypical ones, I would agree with you 100%, and there certainly have been examples of that.  But when it comes to the steel reefers, all the prototypical schemes have been done.