Hi Jace; I think you have a good handle on the situation. When the issue of putting the scale wheels on the car and letting the high rail guys be the ones to change them out was raised years ago, the manufacturers noted that a: most sales are for AF compatible, so they would be inconveniencing the larger part of their market and b: most of the high rail crowd simply will not take a screw driver to a new car to change it over. Certainly the "collector" folks would view that as devaluing the piece, no longer "new in box".
It would be an interesting study to see if any sales of AF compatible stuff came from the RMC ad. I would think not, although maybe someone re-discovers their old Flyer interest that way. We are certainly fighting two mis-perceptions about S. The first is that it is all Flyer and the second is that nothing has been made (including Flyer) since the 1960s. I've heard both assertions. Then again, I've also heard on our side (from the AF fans) that nobody can make anything run on code 100 rail. Asking what they think the many thousands of HO and N scale modelers are doing generally gets a blank look. Pieter E. Roos --- On Thu, 11/11/10, JGG KahnSr <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm relatively new to S scale, so I may be talking through > my hat, but I suspect the same situation applies here as in > O scale, that > the manufacturers still sell a lot more cars to the AF > operating crowd than to the full-scale, and that serious > modelers benefit from > that larger market. It would be nice to see things > the other way around, as Dick suggests, but probably not a > good marketing > idea. > On the other hand, someone else suggested that the ads in > RMC and other media outlets where strict scale is the rule > rather than > the exception might omit all reference to "AF-compatible" > and show only scale applications. That seems to make a > lot of sense. > > Jace Kahn > > General Manager > Ceres & Canisteo RR Co./Champlain County Traction Co. ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
