--- In [email protected], "Edward Loizeaux" <Loizeaux@...> wrote:
>
> >"Bill Lane" wrote:
>
> > Which comes first - the products or the people?
>
>
>
> I would suggest it works both ways. Were folks crying for an I-pad? Do
> they crave one now? In this instance, the product came first then the
> buyers flocked to it. How about On30 (O scale rolling stock on HO track)?
> Was anyone asking for that? But now everyone wants it around their tree.
> It is another example where the product came first and the market
developed
> afterwards.
On30 existed long before Bachmann. In my area of the country, there were
probably as many in On30 as Sn3. There was even an On30 modular group in
the Maryland/Virginia area in the pre-Bachmann era. It was mostly just guys
having fun building funky stuff using HO mechanisms for motive power and
mostly scratch-building everything else.
Dept. 56 is really responsible for Bachmann entering into the On30 market.
They asked Bachmann to make a train to go with their buildings. Bachmann
actually built an Sn42 prototype to fit in with the scale of their buildings
(doors, etc. are usually close to S scale, at least at that time). There is
photographic evidence of this in an old Short & Narrow Rails magazine. The
story goes that Dept. 56 wanted the train larger, so Bachmann changed it to
On30. The first ones came in a Dept. 56 box. This was the 2-6-0 and the
passenger cars. Shortly thereafter Bob Brown wrote an article in the Gazette
about converting it to On3 and Grandt Line produced a kit of parts. The
early stuff Bachmann designed to be converted to On3. The rest is history.
The sad part from our point of view, was that the Dept. 56 thought the Sn42
train was too small. Prior to this time, your only choice of motive power
in narrow gauge in any scale, with few exceptions, was brass. The
exceptions were usually building a kit or scratch-building. There were a lot
of narrow gaugers at that time who had one, two or three brass locomotives
for their total motive power roster. At least the On30 modelers could use
the HO mechanism without narrowing them like those of us in Sn3 did.
>How about Tsunami sound decoders? Or DCC itself? I was not
> aware of a huge cry for any of those items, but there sure is a market
these
> days for those products.
I personally wrote to Soundtraxx about features I would like to see in a
sound decoder after they came out with their first one and did receive a
nice acknowledgement from them. When the Tsunami came out, most of the
additional features I asked for were there. So maybe I'm partly responsible
for the Tsunami's feature set, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one making
suggestions.
I think DCC was part of the natural evolution from analog to digital plus a
new push in layout operations. I was one of the people who used analog
command control because it let you operate more realistically. This is also
true of some heavyweights in the modeling press (Tony Koester, etc.) which
pushed operations rather than just model building. (When your layout is
finished, you operate it, not tear it down and build another one.) The
problem with the analog systems was that they were all incompatible. You
had to pick one and were stuck. There were other digital command control
systems being developed and I even did some testing on my layout for an
alternate digital command control system, but the NMRA backing of the
Lenz-designed system sealed the fate. The fact that the decoders (in
reality, the expensive part of the system) were compatible with anyone's
command station was the key. It still took time. We view DCC as mainstream
now, but only a small percentage of people were using it when I started. In
my case I switched early enough that I could still get some money for my old
Dynatrol analog command control equipment by posting it on
rec.models.railroad, in another internet era.
Dave Heine
Easton, PA
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