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Something I have never understood about the old tinplate trains has my curiosity peaked. If I was making a product as beautiful as Lionel & MTH are in their tinplate catalogs, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops. I'd plant gorgeous hi resolution photo's everywhere, it couldn't help but get folks more interested. But they seem perfectly content with smaller size pics. Why do you suppose that is? 

Here is an example. The two tone green 390E that is being introduced again this year. Gorgeous photo in the tinplate catalog. Shows the elegant colors:

390E

But....when you go to the MTH website and take a look at the same locomotive, it shows one that clearly isn't the same colors: here is a link to the same loco: http://mthtrains.com/11-1050-1 

They obviously used some other photo right? Because here is the same locomotive that was released back in 2009, using a much better photo:  

http://mthtrains.com/11-1005-0

I just find it odd is all. They have alot of things to keep track of and by no means am I doing any "bashing" here...like I mentioned in the beginning, if I made something this gorgeous, everyone in the world would know about it 

Here is what got me to thinking about it. I have a very good friend who has always been very interested in top quality farm toys, mostly Vindex any more. So he likes the best of the best. He talks farm toys, I talk trains. He has been interested in finding an old train, but more recently when I showed him the catalog photo of the two tone green 390E, he took a liking to it. We all know it doesn't stop at just one! But, he is hesitant to purchase, because he only see's a small photo. If he saw a few really nice sharp hi resolution photo's, I know he'd of purchased one already. He most likely will anyway, but better pics sure would have helped. More folks that get involved in the hobby the better for all of us. To me, that would be worth a few more better photo's. 

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Last edited by mtj54
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i never looked this closely before, but on the catalog page you picture, there seems to be a lot of Photoshopping going on.  11-1046-1 and 11-1049-1 are identical photos with the color change Photoshopped.  11-1047 and 11-1050 are close... the boilers look identical, but the wheels and frame are a bit different on the loco and the tender has just the opposite parts cut/ pasted together.  my guess is that they had no models to photo at the time they needed to publish the catalog and just doctored an old photo to be close enough that it probably wouldn't be nit-picked after production.

you can't provide details when none yet exist.
cheers...gary

Last edited by overlandflyer

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Ste 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
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