Is there a market for painted but unlettered steamer models?

[Anonymous]

Do you think there is enough interest for manufactures to start making painted but unlettered models of their steam engines?

Other scales have started offering this as an option to their customers and it seems to work for them. It seems very popular among people who model obsure or freelance roads. I know people will do this on their own but it would be nice not to have to undo work just to do it again the way you wanted it in the first place.

Would this work in this scale and how would it affect collecters?

Actually the question should be would the manufacturers go for it when they know that people who are impacient would not wait for the officially santioned version of the line the customer wants?

What are your thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anyone besides me interested?

[palallin]

I'd love some. there are too few steamers available in my favorite roads. I don't care much for "collectability."

[espeefoamer]

Steam engines were too individualized by railroad.A Pennsylvania 2-8-0 didn't look like a Seaboard 2-8-0 which didn't look like a Southern Pacific 2-8-0.Except for USRA designed locos each railroad designed its own steam engines.

[Anonymous]

Here are a couple of manufactures who make unlettered loco's.
Weaver makes a 4-6-2 USRA Pacific in unlettered. Wiiliams trains makes their 2-8-4 Berkshire and two styles of separate tenders in unlettered too!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the hot tip, dtpowell.

Esspeefoamer good points but some steamers like the USRA engines are applicable to many lines as are some standard builders styles like the Shay, Porter, Climax, Baldwin, etc. Now if only manufactures made a few more models that were non-specifically asociated with only one line. Already the manufacturers paint steamers in schemes they never were in anyway and people buy those.

[Wdlgln005]

Depends on the availability of detail parts. For larger scales, the market may be too small to do this. THe same rule applies to diseasels. How many would buy 2 or 3 or more of the same unit to pull a train? How many sets of ABBA Funits sell? Used to be, the Nscale GP9 was the one with dynamic brakes & GP7 came without. Now we get some road specific details like lights & as built paint scemes. This is tailored to a limited run/advance purchase business model.