I have a collection of WWII military train transports. I will also run same vintage coal hoppers and boxcars. Getting the train car built dates to be of the proper vintage is a little OCD ( or rather CDO - alphabetically correct as it should be) thing of mine. It's all too easy to have rolling stock built dates after the war, but I avoid those. These can be had however.
A little peeve of mine is that the train catalogs should show the "built date", but they don't.
I have picked up some Menards military rolling stock. They have scale flatcars which helps. Some of their loads are really cool (but not all of them realistic). Their jeeps are great. However they say built by Menards and the current year stamp. How do I live with this? I turn off my OCD switch and just enjoy their fun value and low, low prices. In actuality, when they're running I can only read the built date if I run along side of them. Given the pony/slant walls in my train room I would be banging my head at least twice for each loop of the layout. I've tried squinting a lot, but blurring out the rest of the layout in order not to see the built dates seems to be somewhat self defeating. I've thought about putting little American flag stickers over the Menards/built date, but it's hard to come up with 48 star flags. (And, anyway, it seems risky in that it might destroy its collector value (you see, in 20 years they could be worth $5.00)).
So anyway, I fight the evil Axis powers with the best rolling stock I can. I don't worry too much, for you see, I know how it turns out.
I wonder if any Japanese modelers ever model post bomb Hiroshima?
Alan
