Wrong color on new MEC caboose by Atlas?

Atlas is releasing two more numbers of the HO scale extended vision cabooses for Maine Central. Umm... are they supposed to look like this?

http://www.atlasrr.com/Images/HOFreight ... 561_TQ.jpg

you have to tell us what you think is wrong with it!
not everyone is well-versed in the MEC..its a pretty obscure railroad..

but, having experienced 1980's Guilford trains west of Binghamton, NY, im going to assume you are talking about the color?

I dont know when MEC switched to Orange..was Red used earlier perhaps?
it could also just be bad photography..
the caboose might actually be Orange, but the photo has bad color correction..
notice the lettering is blue-ish..not green..
the photo overall might have a blue color cast, throwing off all the colors..

Scot

looking at it further..
I think the photo does *not* have bad color reproduction afterall..
the model really is Red..
notice the neutrals are mostly neutral..and none of the other caboose photos show bad color:

http://www.atlasrr.com/HOFreight/hoevcaboose4.htm

so..the model is not painted correctly, for MEC..
its not supposed to be Red..
Atlas says its in the "Harvest Gold and Green" scheme..which is the standard MEC Orange..
here is an O-scale Atlas caboose, which Atlas also says is in "Harvest gold and green"

http://www.atlaso.com/images/6652-2.gif

obviously that is what "Harvest gold and green" is supposed to look like..

So I would say someone messed up the paintscheme on the pre-production model!
probably someone in China messed up the instructions and painted it wrong..
Atlas should not have used the photo..
hopefully all production models will be correct!

actually..the lettering looks like it might be "photoshopped on" to me..
it might not even be a real MEC model..

obviously someone made a mistake somewhere..

Scot

Yes I was definitely talking about the color. Not even close to the Harvest Yellow used by the Maine Central. The cabooses are going to be the 651 and the 653. From these pictures, http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=1467908 and http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=613771 you can tell that the color is incorrect. The first picture is the 651 which is pretty dirty looking. The second is of the 653 which looks to be pretty newly washed/painted. Hmm...

Somebody goofed! I would suggest sending an e-mail to Atlas and letting them know about this, before they start the production run and can't fix the color issue.

Talked to Dave of Project Development at Atlas a couple of days ago. He said the photo is wrong the color will be the same as past releases.
Yeah!

PHEW!

scottychaos wrote:you have to tell us what you think is wrong with it!
not everyone is well-versed in the MEC..its a pretty obscure railroad.

It can't be that obscure if we have a forum dedicated to it!

Sometimes the photos that Atlas posts to their web site do not acccurately reflect the color of the finished production model.

Otto Vondrak wrote:
Sometimes the photos that Atlas posts to their web site do not acccurately reflect the color of the finished production model.

That's what I was hoping for with the L&HR C420's #21 and 22 ... DOH!!! (Atlas used colors that were too dark for 21 and 22, but corrected the colors on 23 to 29 ... leaving collectors with mismatched locos).

I wasn't alive during the glory days of the MEC, Guilford took over 2 years after I was born, so I never got to see a nice freshly-painted MEC caboose. That being said, the colors on the model do look a lot like what I have seen of MEC cabooses which haven't seen a paint job in at least 25 years.

I've always been a stickler for realistic detail in modeling, I like to see dirty equipment more than clean stuff since the darker colors from years of road wear appear more realistic than a long train of all brand new looking cars. I even put on the graffiti from time to time.