--- In [email protected], "richgajnak" <rustytraque@...> wrote:
> While sending a newbie on a quest "to find what has come before" >may have
> been acceptable B.I. (Before Internet) it's something that >doesn't wash well
> in today's modeling world. The newbie instead will >say "so long, it's been
> fun" and gravitate to a scale with greater >availability.
> One of my fears is that the newer, scale proportioned American >Flyer
> products and SHS by MTH will not draw in the amount of newbies >or satisfy
> the "old guard" enough to help the scale grow enough for >these two companies
> to continue their efforts.
>
You have nailed the problem right on the head. S is the perfect size but the
supply and demand situation has been holding it back.
HO is attractive even to me due to it's ready supply at low cost. Sometimes I
think I'll re-design my new layout as an HO or a P-48 layout simply because I
have and can get more HO and O stuff.. Still not sure what the track gauge will
be but I can build benchwork and backdrops that will work for all three scales
now and decide the winner when it comes to track laying time.
If MTH and Lionel are going to build the scale they need to get out lots of
new product at a cost that is competitive to the other scales. If a high
quality HO car costs $30 and a high quality O car $70 then a high quality S car
needs to cost $50 to attract a wide cross section of buyers.Des Plaines hit the
price point with his new boxcars and I imagine they sold well, I bought one of
almost every paint scheme. Resin kits and Flyer reruns are not gonna do it for
the mainstream modelers that populate the dominate scales as they have had it
too good to go back so far.
Now as for airslides, MTH makes a two bay O gauge version so maybe they'll
upgrade it and offer it in S size? Same for reefers, Lionel makes a nice 57
foot PFE style car so re-doing it in S is a natural.If these companies do what
they've done for O over the last decade we'll be very happy, O had a huge boom
when MTH, Weaver, and Atlas entered the market with tons of new
stuff...DaveBranum
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