John, You are absolutely correct.
This is just me now, but in my experience, if a person or group wants change that person or group has to get right in the face of whomever has the power to effect that change. And the more numbers the better. A congressman acquaintance of mine said that his office only knows what the people want if the people tell him. Further, he said that they consider one letter to be representative of the views of 1,000 constituents. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. In our situation, I think that if the case could be made to L, that yes, there is a market out here for what you are producing, BUT, there could be even more of a market if ________________ (fill in the blanks) was done. IMHO, an effective way to do this might be to persuade one (or more) of the large S dealers who also is a Lionel Authorized dealer to collect names for a letter telling Lionel what S scalers want. That way you have the strength of a direct distributor of their products plus the strength of numbers. And keep after it. Maybe a critique of every catalog that comes out, what might have been included and why. It might even be good to make up a group name: ³ S Scale Modelers United² or whatever. It doesn¹t always take a huge number in the group to have an effect. The message just has to get to the right person who has the capability of acting on the request. Much as I would like to personally grant the S equipment requested by everyone on the group, I do not have the power to make it happen. So while you will have a sympathetic ear, you won¹t get any production from me. The message needs to be stated correctly for management to take notice. For example: Decades ago I was working freelance on an occasional basis, shooting for a small newspaper, processing, etc. There was a water leak in the darkroom. The full time staffer who I replaced while he was on his vacation, groused that management wouldn¹t do anything about it. I took a different tack. I told them that the water leak was ruining their carpet, not that my feet were getting wet. Got the leak fixed the next day. Just IMHO... Cheers :) Roy From: John Degnan <[email protected]> Reply-To: S-Scale <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:33:24 -0500 To: S-Scale <[email protected]> Subject: Re: {S-Scale List} The State of S Scale Don, I have no problem with this. The only problem is that everyone except us scalers seem to have ther ight to voice our thoughts without getting killed for it. If we scalers never voice our thoughts, how are manufacturers supposed to know what we want? John Degnan [email protected] [email protected] > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Don Thompson <mailto:[email protected]> > > To: [email protected] > > Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2012 10:41 AM > > Subject: Re: {S-Scale List} The State of S Scale > > > Boy I hate to keep this thread going for another nano second, but John, I > am sure you will have to agree, if you are interested in S Scale and would > like a U33C or U36C the Lionel offering represents the present. If you are > interested in a SD70ACe, the Lionel AF represents your future. As with EVERY > S scale product I have ever purchased over the last 40+ years (including our > own), there are things I would have changed or in my mind improved. But, the > world is not perfect and as modelers, if you cannot rectify what you feel > needs correcting, pass on it and wait until something more your liking comes > along. > > Don > > > > > John wrote:... and AF does NOT represent the future.
