You might be thinking about OMI and PSC. They had a tit for tat door opening thing going on in that era. It got so bad the PSC RSD-5 was horrible to take apart. Nice solid heavy frame and the hood so full of opening doors that it was very easy to bend out of shape. I have one now, very much like the result of the rebuild, but first thing was to solder all those dam doors shut with the hood on a glass sheet just to straighten out the flobbery thing. Awful.
Both PSC and OMI put prime mover models in the hoods, and you could see them through the slotting in the roof. I painted many for the collectors who were really enthused about the “detail” but, like so many details heaped on models they were absolutely bogus. If those slots were there on an RS-series, that was the venting for the dynamic brakes, you saw the dissipation array through there, not the top of an engine. Same with those infamous flip up hatches on OMI’s Alcos; you see a block, not the equipment that was over the block. Details, details, no matter the wrong details.
The Key/Samhongsa RS-series really was under-appreciated because old-timers were suspicious of the drive. They were typical mid-80s Sam; solid, good representations of specific configurations, easy to work with, run nicely. Looking back, that was when Sam were just hitting their stride, and the models they did at the time for Key and Oriental need make no apology today:
Meanwhile, with PSC and OMI, on any that I own, I solder them shut and actually have to do some “de-detailing”. Better structure, less detailed but more accurate (novel concept. Grin!)
