MTL Z March Items

Glenn Woodle Feb 27, 2009

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  1. Glenn Woodle

    Glenn Woodle TrainBoard Member

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  2. BNSF Dash 9

    BNSF Dash 9 TrainBoard Member

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    WOOT! SP overnite boxcars!!!! :tb-biggrin::thumbs_up:
     
  3. Joe D'Amato

    Joe D'Amato TrainBoard Member

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    Frankly I got tired of painting them and seeing Lindly suffer with making decals...kidding. This was a surprise move for me as well...marketing snuck these in without letting me know. I went in yesterday and reserved 4 sets for myself. I'll make up some decal sheets with new numbers so when they come out, contact me and I'll shoot folks some as long as it doesn't get too crazy.

    Cheers

    Joe
    MTL

     
  4. Mike Skibbe

    Mike Skibbe TrainBoard Member

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    I assume the lettering on the GN dome will be corrected before full production?
     
  5. umtrr-author

    umtrr-author TrainBoard Member

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    Perhaps you could be more specific. Enlighten us.
     
  6. GN-Z-phile

    GN-Z-phile TrainBoard Member

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    Lettering

    George, I was thinking WCL was referring to the photos of the new passenger cars now on the MTL site. But the lettering itself on the dome car looks fine. It may be a question of placement, centered for the car vs. centered under the dome (a quick check suggests "Great Northern" should be centered under the dome). In the photo of the baggage car. the lettering appears to be peeling off, and reads more like "Greal Nortmert" than "Great Northern".
     
  7. jlundy46

    jlundy46 TrainBoard Supporter

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    The Empire Builder lettering is directly under the dome.

    John
     
  8. jlundy46

    jlundy46 TrainBoard Supporter

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    Here is a picture of the dome car with the proper lettering.

    John


    [​IMG]
     
  9. umtrr-author

    umtrr-author TrainBoard Member

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    With Joe here, it's probably not the smartest thing to do to guess, but I will anyway with respect to the photo of the baggage car-- probably a bad image rendering.

    I've had that problem with some of my digital photos when I shrink them down too much... yuk, detail badly garbled. Could be that's what happened here. MTL supplies fairly large high-res images for print-based articles like mine, so I know that they exist and there could have been a problem in translation to a smaller .jpeg.

    I've already grabbed the images off the MTL website for the "Month by Month" page on the UMTRR Website, and the lettering looks fine on the baggage car when I view the .jpeg directly.

    As for the roadname placement on the dome, hmm, better let Joe handle that one... but I wonder if it is under the dome on the side of the car that we're not seeing?
     
  10. GN-Z-phile

    GN-Z-phile TrainBoard Member

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    Looking at the baggage car image (on the MTL website) again, I see where the whole image is "wavy". It's especially noticable when you look at the pinstriping. I seriously doubt MTL would release a car that looked as if it were melting. ;-)

    As for the dome car lettering, George is right that we should withold judgement until we see the real thing.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 27, 2009
  11. jlundy46

    jlundy46 TrainBoard Supporter

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    If memory serves me (often doesn't anymore) the EB lettering was under the dome on both sides of the car.

    John
     
  12. jlundy46

    jlundy46 TrainBoard Supporter

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    As for the prototype, I just confirmed that the EB lettering is under the dome on both sides of the car. References are:

    Great Northern Empire Builder by Bill Yenne and Great Northern Pictorial Volume 3 by John F Strauss, Jr

    John
     
  13. jlundy46

    jlundy46 TrainBoard Supporter

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    I looked at the picture of the dome car on the MTL website again, and it looks like they put the roof on backwards on that car. Since the roof is a separate piece, if the lettering is directly opposite on each side, then the lettering is OK if the dome is closer to the proper end. Hope that makes sense.

    John
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 27, 2009
  14. BNSF Dash 9

    BNSF Dash 9 TrainBoard Member

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    Joe,

    I would love to get a set of decals to renumber my overnite boxcars when they get here. I also am ordering 4 sets once they are out for pre-ordering.

    I just noticed KODACHROME GP35!!!! I'm a very happy person with Blackwidows and now kodachrome units.

    Thanks again MT.
     
  15. Lindley Ruddick

    Lindley Ruddick TrainBoard Member

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    Joe,
    Thanks for the sympathy! I actually ENJOY making and applying decals. That and painting are my things. As you, Lajos and John Duino are well aware, scenery in NOT my thing - witness the BA module ends. At least they were used (needed?) at the last GTE show in Anaheim. I got lucky with the two black cars I did. I picked numbers 97610 and 97669.
    I don't want to seem like a rivet counter and I am certainly no expert but you might wish to have the MTL research department check out the lettering on the black cars. I only have a couple of pictures of the 1:1 cars but both have SP - not SOUTHERN PACIFIC above the cars numbers. The old MicroScale decal sheet only has SP also.
    I have 4 silver Overnight cars (no black roofs or ends!) and hope to do more. Now if MTL does those or the 4 two toned gray box cars, I might be a bit unhappy but .......
    The SP Kodachrome GP30 was a surprise. I am tempted but just bought some GN stuff from Loren (and pre-ordered a set of black SP ON cars) so used up my train money for a while.
    Lindley
     
  16. bambuko

    bambuko TrainBoard Member

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    with all this discussion about lettering position, I am surprised that nobody commented about the window count?
    1:1 has 4 one side of the dome and 2 + 1 (smaller) other side
    1:220 has 5 one side of the dome and 4 the other side
    so even if MTL puts the roof right way round (I tend to think that jlundy46 is right about that) the car still doesn't quite look like the original?
    Or am I a "window counter" (particularly virulent version of "rivet counter" :tb-biggrin:)
     
  17. Joe D'Amato

    Joe D'Amato TrainBoard Member

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    Lindley,

    That car had both styles of lettering depending on the time period. During the 1940's there was a general change in how SP Cars were marked. Page 286-287 of Thompson's SP Boxcar book shows examples of the paint schemes...I believe on 285 there is a paint diagram. According to Thompson, the Mt Vernon shops began to spell out the name around 1946. So, it's ok to mix the schemes since not all of them got re-lettered. So...buy more cars!!!!!!!!!


    Joe
    MTl




     
  18. Joe D'Amato

    Joe D'Amato TrainBoard Member

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    Beyond the prototypes the models were designed after, every road will have some degree of fudge on window count unfortunatly. We have to weigh being off on a car style to provide a paint scheme or not do it...most folks are happy to get the road names they are modeling and understand some of the issues we deal with. I'd love to do a pure prototype for all these cars, but the cost would make it impossible to do. Part of my thoughts on offering the cars seperate and not in a boxed set was to allow folks to pick and choose...if a car is too much out of prototype for them, they have the option not to buy it...and with pre-orders we only make what folks want.

    Cheers

    Joe
    MTL



     
  19. jlundy46

    jlundy46 TrainBoard Supporter

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    Windows are not that big a deal for me and I understand Joe's point about the cost to match each road being prohibitive. Even in HO and N plastic passenger cars tend to be rather generic. In those scales if you really want the prototype you can buy brass if you have the money. One possibility would be Z scale brass car sides as they have in N. They are prototypically correct for a certain car and you simply cut our the proper spaces on the plastic car sides and glue the brass sides on. Perhaps some of out laser literate colleagues could look into that.

    As for the EB lettering, I sure hope it is simply a matter of the roof having been put on backwards.

    John
     
  20. bambuko

    bambuko TrainBoard Member

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    I was guessing that much :tb-biggrin:
    I was simply perplexed by human nature, which is splitting hair on position of lettering, while prepared to ignore just as (if not more) visible shortcuts on overall car design?
    Still, each to his/her own . . .
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 28, 2009
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