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Reply to "Lionel's odd catalog images"

Dave Olson posted

We're moving towards doing this more often. If you look in the newest catalog, the SW7 and SD45 are done off my SolidWorks models. I rendered them all individually so that the images actually show the road specific details. The only thing not shown is the cab interior because I don't model the figures.

 

Art costs and Lionel trains are not all the rage, these days.  Apple doesn't need artwork, all they need do is announce their latest "iSomthing" and people are camping out on the street in front of their stores in order to be the first to pay $800+ for a telephone, and will be first in line to buy the next one.

Having spent nearly five decades in friendship with railroad artist Mitch Markovitz, I've heard it all.  Dave Olson of Lionel (who has the guts to face his customers here - God bless him) has verified Mitch's longstanding statement that companies, large and small, think they can get by with DIY computer generated artwork - and they do.  When the entire marketplace is flooded with DIY art, how would anyone under the age of 70, save for an art student or an aging railfan, know the difference?

In addition to Norman Rockwell, Mitch's heroes include Leslie Ragan and Oscar Rabe Hanson and it shows in his work.  The first time I saw "Breakfast in Hoosierland", I was there - I could smell the brake shoes, the diesel exhaust, the charcoal of the galley stove and, of course, the bacon...

MarkovitzPrrBreakfast MarkovitzCSS&SBparlor MarkovitzAC

Perhaps a quote from architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, who wrote Farewell to Penn Station in an October 1963 editorial in the New York Times, can be applied to our hobby and its artwork:

"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves."

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