>From a personal viewpoint I have lost nearly all interest in American Flyer. My attitude toward Flyer is not all that different from John's. But I respect the American Flyer/highrail market power since they are 90% or so of the S customers. It seems pretty silly to me to exclude them from consideration when the success of the project depends on volume of purchases. If the project can be done with only the scalers, fine. But I see that nothing has to be sacrificed by the scalers by selling models to the highrailers. I have read some of Jim King's messages on earlier projects that he cannot design the models to serve both scale and highrail without compromise, but in most models I do not see why any sacrifice is necessary. But Jim is the production guy and he can decide. But if I was the promoter, I sure would try to make this project available to all S modelers. Heck, in addition to making the project a GO, he might make some money. . Don Thompson has brought us so many models that we would never have had if he had taken the extreme bias against the Flyer market that John Degnan is expressing. This includes the heavyweights now offered by AM as well as the lineup of locos and freight cars offered by SHS. Would we ever have had those models if they had only been made for the scale crowd. So to Jim, John, or whoever might revive this project, I encourage you to design it to high scale standards but also to see if it can be designed to accept some type of highrail trucks. The Flyer crowd is much more likely to accept the compromises to make this possible. We often talk about converts to scale. Some write that our potential converts are from other scales, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. But there are also scalers who converted because manufacturers like AM and SHS made it easy to choose and convert to scale. I am one of those even though I have a lot of work to ever get the conversion completed. One more thing. I just reread John's last message and see his statement that "since AF is now basically DEAD". If true that would be fine with me. But I see an ever expanding line of American Flyer product being offered from Lionel. A lot of it looks like crap (see their full length dome cars!) and the pricing is ridiculously high. But they have at least a temporary advantage in that they are still a customer of Sanda Kan, and they probably have a lot more collectors than we have scalers.. - Earl Henry, Nashville In a message dated 4/13/2011 8:02:59 A.M. Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
I developed the term "backwards compatable" about 2 years ago when I started my box car project to deal with S folks who were pushing me to make my model to AF standards with the OPTION for "forward compatability" to scale with the addition of a few extra super-detail parts (at a higher cost for the extra, super-detail parts). I personally believe that this is one of S scale's biggest problems... when the rest of the modeling world sees S models, they generelly see AF... not scale. So I believe that since technology is improving on a daily basis, and that since AF is now basically DEAD, that S offerings should be just the opposite - they should be "backwards compatable" to AF standards instead of "forward compatable" to scale standards. If a AF nut wants to chop up a nicely scaled model to fit their crappy looking wheels and couplers on it... so be it. But scale modelers should not have to pay for any extra super detail par ts to improve an already very expensive model produced with modern technology. So... as far as I'm concerned... AF folks can chop, chop away on my super-nice models (if I ever produce any) if they want... but that model will be coming out of the box intended for and configured for SCALE. To coin a few terms - Uglification (on the AF guys' part) instead of Prettification (on the scale guys' part)... that is how I see it... giving AF guys the back seat instead of the scale guys. Now... if you ever get the nerve... ask me about another term I coined not too long back - REVERSE PROTOTYPING. John Degnan [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) ----- Original Message ----- From: gsc3 To: [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 11:11 PM Subject: Re: {S-Scale List} SAL Roundroof boxcar Fully understand your point, John. And I fully agree that anything you produce must be to your standards. My question was directed to the fact that there might not need be any sacrifice of accuracy or any compromise in the production on your end. George Courtney --- In [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) , "John Degnan" <Scaler164@...> wrote: > > And for the record... none of my projects will ever be hi-rail compatable... sales or not. I'm not in the marked for toys, so I won't produce them, either. (or sacrifice the accuracy of a model for the sake of compatability) I'd just rather not produce the model. > > My ten cents worth. > > > John Degnan > Scaler164@... > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ 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/
