Breakdown of Engines By Make-Revisited

Out of 29 total powered units-

 6.89%-2 MARX Tin (both Commadore Vanderbilts)

 3.45%-1 K-line, (Semi-Scale GG-1)

 3.45%-1 Williams (before B-mann) (Semi-Scale GG-1)

20.69%-6 MPC, steamers

10.34%-3 MPC, diesel switchers

10.34%-3 Lionel Post War diesel switchers

31.03%-9Lionel post war steamers

 3.45%-1 TMCC Lionel steamer (Berk) 

 3.45%-1 TMCC Lionel E33/EL-C (Virginian Rectifier)

 3.45%-1 Modern Lionel Hi-rail pickup truck

 3.45%-1 MTH VW Beetle Inspection car

(99.9% total here)

Out of 36 powered locos:

15 Williams

11 Lionel

6 RMT

MTH 2

K Line 1

Marx 1

All are conventional, the best runners are the Williams.  The ones I'd most like to unload are the MPC Lionels.  However I am interested in buying a Lion Chief Plus, they seem to be getting positive reviews.  

Lionel: 10

MTH: 1

K-LINE: 1

MARX: 1

         Diesel    Elec    Steam  Total
Lionel    5         2          3       10
WbB      1         0          1         2
K-Line    1         0          0        1

How do you count MTH engines with ERR Cruise Commanders in them?  How about Williams engines with PS/2 upgrade kits?

It was intended as just an engine make survey; not a control system survey. For purposes of the survey there is no difference in a conventional Lionel vs a TMCC/Legacy vs an ERR Lionel, or for that matter a Lionel converted to PS-2.

Rod

ok Ill jump in it's a small list but growing.

Lionel 3 modern steamers 2X 4-4-2 1X 2-8-4

Lionel 1 MPC era steamer 1 X 2-8-4

lionel  2 Post war diesel 2 X F3 one err upgraded

lionel  2 Modern diesel Gp20 and sd90

MTH    1 Steamer proto 3.0 2-6

Lionel Thomas does that count?

Lionel Hogwartz does that count ?

Make: total (scale total/O31 total)

Steam:

K-Line:  5 (3/2)

Lionel:  8 (6/2)

Lionel PW/MPC:  4 (0/4)

MTH:  7 (6/1)

Weaver:  4 (4/0)

Williams:  1 (1/0)

3rd Rail: 2 (2/0)

Diesel (Only powered A-units in ABA/AA/AB MUs were counted, dummies not counted):

K-Line: 4 (3/1)

Lionel:  8 (8/0)

Lionel PW/MPC:  1 (0/1)

MTH:  6 (6/0)

Weaver:  3 (3/0)

Atlas O:  4 (4/0)

Electrics:

K-Line:  1 (0/1)

Lionel:  1 (1/0)

MTH:  4 (4/0)

Williams:  3 (2/1)

Total:

K-Line: 10 (6/4)

Lionel:  17 (15/2)

Lionel PW/MPC: 6 (1/6)

MTH:  17 (16/1)

Weaver:  7 (7/0)

Williams:  4 (3/1)

3rd Rail:  2 (2/0)

Atlas O:  4 (4/0)

Not counting Lionel PW/MPC, all but 2 scale and one O31 are command control engines.  Williams and Weaver steamers are DCS upgrades.  All other non-MTH are TMCC.

Ron

Here's a scale E60 I cobbled together from two Williams shells and Lionel running gear.

Very nice.

Good luck adding all the responses up for a total.

Lionel     38

MTH         9

K-Line      4

Atlas        2

Williams   2

STANDARD GAUGE

Lionel       8

MTH        12

MTH:         8 (Proto 2.0, 3.0)

Lionel:      5 (TMCC)

All diesels and all command control.

I'll try to revise the statistics and table tomorrow, based on all who posted since last time. 

1 Lionel Legacy F-7 ABBA

1 Weaver RS-3 w/TMCC

1 MTH Trainmaster w/PS3 RK Scale

1 MTH SD70ACe w/PS3 Premier

1 MTH GP9 w/PS3 RK Scale

1 MTH SW9 w/PS3 RK Scale

That's a 4 to 1 MTH over either Lionel or Weaver. I believe that selection and price are two major factors for my buying decisions. 

Here is a revised breakdown reflecting 80 forum members who have reported their ownership numbers; a total of nearly 3,900 locomotives.  Nothing substantial changed.  Lionel and K-line both slipped by 1% in the table, but that was mostly rounding (Lionel went from 39.6% to 39.4%, K-line from 4.5% to 4.4%, some of the others, most notably Marx, increased by a few tenths of a percent).

Lionel      36%

MTH         54%

Williams   10%

Lee, once again thanks for doing the number crunching to tally the results!

It is interesting that the Lionel total of 54% is double the 27% of mth. 

I guess considering that Lionel has been around 11 decades compared to 2 decades for mth it's not too surprising.

The new Lionel total of 39% against mth 27% shows that Lionel still has a commanding presence in our hobby (no Legacy pun intended!)

with mth current focus on HO and European trains, I bet their share of O gauge will slip further over the next few years!

Rod

What category does Lionel MPC fall in, new or old ?

This is all very interesting.  I'd like to thank Rod for starting the thread and Lee for all that number crunching.  Nice going, guys.

Two things that stand out to me:  That new Lionel by itself has still so much larger a share than MTH, and that everybody else is so small, considering how often the other brands are mentioned on this forum.

I counted it as old.

What I think is telling is that K-Line, which was not around very long, still has 4%, only a bit less than WBB.

"The new Lionel total of 39% against mth 27% shows that Lionel still has a commanding presence in our hobby (no Legacy pun intended!)"

What's worth considering is that the majority of new Lionel locomotive sales likely are those in sets, and the folks who own these probably own only one or two locos and are not even represented on this forum or in these summary statistics.  The present numbers only represent the serious hobbyist in all likelihood, who represent a smaller proportion of Lionel's locomotive sales overall, as compared with other vendors who do not sell many sets, at least compared with Lionel.

3 MTH Proto 2. 

1 Steam

2 Diesels

"What I think is telling is that K-Line, which was not around very long, still has 4%, only a bit less than WBB."

Lee, I have to agree. Sure wish they were still around.

I love my K-Line steam!

Rod

Is it too late to be considered in the count.

Lionel: 31

MTH: 20

K-Line: 11

Williams: 7

RMT:  5

3rd Rail: 2

IDR: 1

I will tally up the totals again soon, with you included gunrunnerjohn.

4 - K-Line

2 - Lionel

24 - MTH

7 - Williams

14 -   Lionel, 12 TMCC,  2 Legacy

4 -     K Line,  3 with Lionel TMCC

2 -     3rd Rail/Sunset,  both with TMCC

1 -     Weaver, QSI 

1 -     MTH,  Proto 1

22 Total,  14 Steam engines,  8 Diesels

Chris A,  Middleboro, MA  

Lee,

Very interesting info, and a hearty "Thank you" for undertaking the project. It is just a shame so many here on the Forum can't seem to just give you the actual number by make (ie. Lionel, MTH etc. and NOT Railking, MPC era, PS3, GP30 or whatever); at first this request of yours seemed so straight forward. Then i thought about my days training counter people in auto parts stores, when we'd get a customer come in and ask for something simple like a headlight. The counter person would ask for what make of car. The customer would sometimes reply a "blue 4 door". On really stressful days i'd hear the counter person (after asking the question re. make a second or third time, and getting the same answer) respond by saying, "sorry we don't have any headlights for blue 4 doors, only for red 2 doors." Maybe these same people are now into toy trains when asked to respond by make!!

Again thanks for your efforts.

jackson

Hehe! In the late '80s, I was working in an AT&T building (16 stories) and was in the building manager's office talking to him about some work that needed to be done by my company. A guy calls in on the elevator phone system and says he is stuck on the elevator, it had just quit. Building manager asked him which way he was going (meaning up or down), guy said 'south'.  I thought the building manager was going to blow a gasket and just leave him on the elevator.  He finally cooled off a little and got someone to address the problem and rescue the guy. Sorry for the off topic post, but your story reminded me of that one.

95 MTH PS2/PS3

  1 Lionel Legacy

  1 Lionel TMCC

I just bought another MTH engine so I have 16 now instead of the 15 that I said earlier on this thread! Lol

Well, we have no issues figuring out where your allegiance lies.

Since I only have the MTH DCS system I run MTH PS-1, 2 and 3.

MTH - 8 PS-1 (1 steam)

MTH - 7 PS-2

MTH - 1 PS-3

My conventional engines include Lionel and Williams (by Bachmann).

Lionel - 6 conventional - steam and diesel

Williams - 12 - all diesel

Not much use in the fun statistics, unless we're to assume you have one of each.