This. And then you also have to take into account the lighting they used for the photo, and your own personal settings for your PC monitor.
Clint, I definitely feel your pain. It's funny to see people criticize for "nitpicking" about colors and then 6 months later "their" road comes out and paint is all of a sudden a REAL ISSUE. ;-) I definitely see your point on the Bachmann crummy...at best it's at least one or two "shades" off on both the orange and the green. If there's a 512 pack of crayons I'd say they're at least 4 crayons off on the orange and 2 on the green. And that's just to get to the big photo you posted, which seems very much sun-heavy to me. Hopefully you can "alcohol-fade" it and maybe it will be salvageable.
Seriously? We have no idea what kind of lighting was used to take any of those photos. While I admit the Bachmann car might be a bit orange, we are looking at an HO model from a different run and different lighting and comparing it to a dirty caboose with natural lighting and a N scale model with different lighting. Wait for the new Bachmann caboose. Buy the Bachmann caboose. Go outside and photograph it with a film camera. I guarantee you it will turn out more yellow than artificial lighting, which gets over corrected on white balancing digital cameras. Any inconsistencies can be corrected with a light coat of fade paint. Atlas changed their Conrail colors years ago when they realized the color matched blue appeared too dark on models. They eventually used a blue that’s several shades lighter than the prototype, but looks natural on layouts. /soapbox
Seems to me that if the way the cab is painted is wrong that contacting the manufacturer before the models are released might be the way to go. They may not listen but at least then you can say that they were made aware of the error. Some modelers will buy them irregardless of the error in the paint simply because they are MEC...
Being a life long J fan, I have some experience with orange. We've talked for weeks on our list about the various orange shades. I have to say... I think it's actually pretty close to that photo. But I believe that photo is also a bit under saturated, which is typical of slide scans that haven;t been adjusted. If you bumped up that photo to a more adjusted level, I think it would pop more and be closer to the model. But I recall seeing shades of orange on the J vary wildly. It all depends on the paint they used, age, cleanliness and so on. Look at the differences in this consist... http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwdavidson/6406846595/sizes/l/in/photostream/
In the end.........I would think it would be as simple as "buy it if you like it", "don't buy it if you don't".
But really it's not that simple. If you are trying to build a model railroad based on a prototype, you obviously want to have as many models as possible that will set the tone, the theme, the era, the locale, and the essence of the railroad. In n-scale, it is rare when tooling gets duplicated. (it is becoming less rare, and especially in this case it appears there is a direct alternative, but generally speaking it is still rare) So when a manufacturer spends the money on that tooling, you would think they would make the effort to get the decoration correct. It can, of course, be argued that they KNOW there likely won't be competition so who cares if it's close? But I don't think as a general rule that ANY company relishes in alienating their customers, and are they're gonna make a good effort to produce a quality product. I would stop short of saying they have an *obligation* or a *duty* to take their tooling and do whatever it takes to make it correct, but in essence as model railroaders we are at their mercy. So, it is frustrating that a model is VERY good in almost every respect (nice tooling, good performance, solid features like metal wheels, good trucks, knuckle couplers, and etched detail parts, etc) yet they "mail it in" with the paint job and lettering/logos. Yes, in this case there is a substitute product but I'm betting the overall quality of the Bachmann is better so....yeah you can vote with your wallet and not buy it, but you may be missing an important component to your model railroad. A better example would be Kato's BN SD70MAC's...beautiful tooling and in their case I think they even got the color pretty much spot on, but the application of paint was sloppy in the extreme. There's no other option in that example, so you either take it or literally leave it and have nothing. You can't adequately model a 90's+ BN/BNSF coal hauling line without a SD70MAC, so....frustration. So I think the issue is not about buying it or not...it's about "why do they put all the effort to get SO far and invest SO MUCH money in tooling, yet not finish the job?" I sometimes think Kato only has 16 crayons....and no marbles.
I can imagine it would get somewhat frustrating if the color was WAY off, as that would cause a "repaint", which would be a pain. But it seems to me, by & large, most can be cured with weathering or minor relaxation of standards. I have seen too many posts where guys just rip the makers because, to their eyes, the color is off by a shade or two. I feel that we should be happy that we have the variety of models that we enjoy today. It has NOT been that way for that long.....used to be you had to settle for what you got, or build your own. Now, we have many more choices available. Prototype colors don't match!! There are a few roads that will use "whatever" when it comes to quality of paint, and it fades. I still stick to my original "if you like it, buy it".........."if you don't, don't buy it"........as that's my practice for my own hobby. I let my $$$ speak.
DaveD, Thanks for the photos. Nscalerone, I agree with you. Since I realize that different paint shops from the same railroad will use different shades of the same paint and with being out in the weather paints do not always match as Dave's photo shows. Look at enough new and older engines and rolling stock in the real world and this becomes apparent.
OK, how about now? I just gave the color an adjustment and a little black level/contrast tweak. Seems more natural looking now.
