Dave, thanks for the pictures and commentary. As someone who has been frustrated by the endless color gaffes, here are a few random thoughts on them:
Firstly, the “fix” does not feel like a eureka moment - getting samples ahead of time seems intuitively obvious and could have saved a lot of frustration had such a process been utilized years ago when the problems were first reported. I hope this practice is not going to be limited to locomotives - the color problems are just as prevalent in passenger cars and freight cars.
The Pacemaker set is a good example of something I believe to be true on the subject of color “correctness”: consumers are more interested in fidelity to previous models than fidelity to prototypes. So, while it’s true a Pacemaker Mohawk prototype doesn’t exist, Lionel has released lots and lots of rolling stock in Pacemaker red and buyers of this locomotive assume it will be the same red when their order shows up. If they show up maroon or pinkish (like the First Responders SD60s), buyers will be rightfully upset and the answer can’t be “well, there is no prototype.” For example, in my view, the Tuscan S1 can be fairly criticized as “incorrect” because it resembles no previous Tuscan release of anything going all the way back to postwar GG1s (admittedly the S1s are sharp and I realize many like them - my only point is they are not Tuscan under any previous use of the color).
Hopefully, we’ve seen the last of the battleship gray/auto primer smoke boxes. That’s a fix that’s long overdue and should not have taken years to figure out. The 3001 in your picture does not appear to have such a color, but maybe it’s the lighting.
