I love asking questions that have no real answer, and this is one of them...
In the 1980s, when MPC was cranking out diesels, how did they choose the railroads that they would represent? Let's leave the common lines out of this: PRR, UP, B/C&O, BN, ATSF, etc. My favorite engine of the time was 6-8066, painted in the livery of the Toledo, Peoria & Western. Bright (almost eye melting) orange, great angular typography. They made only three items, as far as I could tell, in this color scheme: the engine, the caboose and a single box car. It was in the Cross Country Express set, if my memory serves me. Ironically, the box car in this set used a much older TP&W paint job - if you wanted the bright orange box, 6-9424, you had to hunt it down on your own.
To this day, I have never seen anything close to this. In fact, I have never seen anybody (besides Menards) do anything for the TP&W. Oh, and they used yet a different paint scheme!
I realize that there were hundreds of railroads that were never memorialized in model form. But who got to decide that, in 1980, it was time for Peoria to shine, and they've deserved no love since then? 
