Rock Island Blue in N-Scale

[Anonymous]

I've noticed quite a bit of Rock Island N-scale rolling stock in the "bankrupcy
blue" livery being available from a number of manufacturers and I've got a fair
amount on my system now.

I haven't seen anything in the way of N-scale locomotives in "The Rock" blue &
white scheme for a very long time. I know Bachmann in earlier releases had
a U-boat I think in that pattern.

I'm curious to know why Kato or Atlas or Life-Like haven't issued anything in
that scheme. Personally that's my favorite Rock Island livery and from all the
custom-painted power I see in hobby shops and shows there must be plenty
of popularity for it.

[MAbruce]

Hard to say why. My guess is that since the development of new locos is rather expensive, the manufacturers tend to stick with (major) road names they know are good sellers (UP, ATSF, Conrail, etc) so they will get a good return on their investment.

Although I did notice the Erie Lackawanna tends to turn up a lot with Atlas - probably because Paul Graf (of Atlas) is an EL fan. Chalk that one up to the perks of working for the manufacturer! [;)][:p]

There is an on-line database resource that will allow you to look up N-scale locos by road name to see what has been released:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/dawestern/nscale/nscale.html

I’m not sure if it quite up to date with the current releases, but it’s a great historical database!