Cylindrical hoppers round two....

Well, at least they addressed one issue properly. 

I didn't seriously expect any changes to the bolster.

Rusty

 "they do track through the Lionel fast-track crossover without a problem."

    That's good to hear. Should make the hi rail guys happy. Now if Lionel would sell them without trucks so scale modelers didn't have to pay for the hi rail trucks everyone would be satisfied....DaveB 

We all know that's not going to happen. 

At least there might be a secondary market for the trucks, now.

Rusty

Do you think the S market, hi-rail and scale, would support a truckless product? 

If I were to purchase the cylindrical hoppers online, how would I know if they are first or second run?

Mark

"Do you think the S market, hi-rail and scale, would support a truckless product?"

   I see truckless S scale kits get lots of bids on ebay and modelers in other scales have been buying truckless cars for decades.  A truckless car is way better than no car at all :> 

   Of course selling them with scale trucks would make more sense but that seems too difficult for Lionel to pull off? I guess the bottom line is they are not really interested in growing the S scale market but still want to keep us hanging as easy to pick fruit? ...DaveB

Selling something less trucks and couplers is not in Lionel's business plan.  These cars are not marketed to the same crowd as the new kits from S Scale America or Smoky Mountain Models.

This is the new reality of the mass marketing (if you can call it that) of S and it's a Flyer-compatible world.  I'm not particularly fond of it, but unless the scale side S can break through that invisible 15% barrier, it's going to have to be dealt with these terms.

At least MTH is selling properly gauged wheels and trucks that allow the car to sit at the correct height.  At least one dealer is willing to swap out the wheels on MTH S with scale wheels.

Then, there's always American Models where you can order wheels your way.

Rusty

Unless there's a dealer out there changing out the trucks (very unlikely,) these are the "second run" or the only ones with the new Flyer wheels:

648862 Gov't of Canada 3-Bay Cylindrical Hopper #106010 12/5/2014
648863 CN 3-Bay Cylindrical Hopper #369290 12/5/2014
648864 A/F AT&SF 3-Bay Cylindrical Hopper #300032 12/5/2014
648865 A/F Frisco 3-Bay Cylindrical Hopper #81028 12/5/2014
648866 A/F GN 3-Bay Cylindrical Hopper #71600 12/5/2014

Anything else has the old out of gauge scale wheels.

Rusty

"This is the new reality of the mass marketing (if you can call it that) of S and it's a Flyer-compatible world.  I'm not particularly fond of it, but unless the scale side S can break through that invisible 15% barrier, it's going to have to be dealt with these terms."

  I doubt that S scale can ever break thru the 15% barrier without product to buy. The HO and O scale crowd is accustomed to being able to buy lots of stuff so even though S is a better size for many of them there is no physical way they can start buy S stuff. Even American models has this problem. I love their stuff and bought everything I could from them years ago but nothing new has appeared for decades.Maybe they are too close to retirement to put out more modern stuff? Perhaps MTH will get rolling one of these days and start exploiting the market potential? If he knows it will bother Lionel he'll be more likely to push the S button  I'd imagine? It would be great if an innovator like Irv Athearn came along and decided to re-make the model railroad scene by actually making and marketing S scale to all the waiting masses .......DaveB

Gee... you sound like me 25 years ago...

Rusty

"Gee... you sound like me 25 years ago.."

   Yeah, I remember seeing the first SHS PS2 hopper at the local hobby shop and thinking wow this is perfect,  S is gonna take off like a rocket. but then a big flame out. I guess folks just can't get by the "nothing to buy" concept even though there is a bit to buy and more would follow if more modelers were willing to buy less other scales and demand  more S stuff if the companies want their money. The companies are gonna take the easy way out as long as we let them. They'll sell the same old stuff as long as they can in the absence of any pressure to give us more choice in our modeling......DaveB

Frankly, I don't see any practical way of applying pressure on the manufacturers, especially from the scale side.

There's not a lot of alternatives out there.  AM has their reasons for doing things the way they do and it seems to be working for them, SSA isn't the breadwinner for DesPlaines Hobbies, interest in MTH may or may not pick up once the F3's get delivered and Smoky Mountain Models has a real job to cover their sideline of making quality S kits.

Sure, we can refuse to buy or order something to make a statement, but I think we've seen the results of that strategy with the 57' mechanical reefers.  While the lack of preorders was a situation of mostly of Lionel's own making, (opinion) I think it will have an undesired a ripple effect on future Flyer offerings.

At this point, who knows what direction Lionel will take with Flyer.  I could be wrong, but I expect it's not going to have an increased reliance on producing scale-friendly products.  I'm also pretty certain they're not going to sell Flyer off to a potential dedicated S manufacturer or investor, if such a thing even exists nowadays.

Rusty

"At this point, who knows what direction Lionel will take with Flyer.  I could be wrong, but I expect it's not going to have an increased reliance on producing scale-friendly products.  I'm also pretty certain they're not going to sell Flyer off to a potential dedicated S manufacturer or investor, if such a thing even exists nowadays."

    I view Lionel selling flyer stuff like the auto companies selling the last of the gas hogs off to the old school while foreign companies came in and gave us fuel efficient cars. We just gotta figure out who our honda and toyotoa will be. Cash is waiting for the builder that can understand the demographics and physics of the model railroad hobby. It's not really as hard as Lionel makes it out to be, SHS did a great job of working scale and Hirail into the same car, it's more a matter of attitude and willingness to broaden their appeal to the greater hobby field....DaveB

I would have to say that in some respects, Lionel has attempted to broaden the appeal of S.  The SD70's and ES44's in particular are proof of that.  The fact that the pilots can be anchored, Kadee mounts included, scale wheel availability (although that still seems to be oddly handled) and DCC compatibility all attest to Lionel attempting to reach out to the scale crowd. 

Add in the Y3 can be converted to scale wheels and reprogrammed for DCC by a third party (admittedly at extra cost) reinforces the fact.

Then they go and blow it with the trucks on the cylindrical hoppers...  And were slow to acknowledge the problem.  Even if the wheels were properly gauged, there's still the issue of the car sitting too high which doesn't seem to concern them.

So we had an apparent boycott of the 57' mechanical reefer as a result and look where it got us. 

The good news is Smoky Mountain is considering offering their 57' mechanical reefer kit again and it will be superior in detail to the Lionel version.  But, it will cost the same (if not a little more now,) than the Lionel version was slated for, will need to be assembled, painted, decaled, trucks still would need to be bought and you won't find any big dealers carrying and discounting them.  Good for the S Scale craftsman or kitbuilder, bad for the mass marketing of S.

True, SHS hit the sweet spot for appeal in S, but they're gone now and MTH has eliminated the big selling point of including both sets of wheels.

I'll be interested in what the next Flyer catalog includes, as it may give us a better idea of which direction Lionel's going to take Flyer now, but I suspect there may be less for the scale side.

Rusty

 "SHS hit the sweet spot for appeal in S, but they're gone now and MTH has eliminated the big selling point of including both sets of wheels."

  Yeah, I find it odd that they would buy something and not recognize what made it successful to begin with? MTH should be smarter than that so I'm not sure what they are planning.Perhaps just a tax write off? :>

As for Lionel's commitment they gotta realize that a couple of modern locos without any new cars to pull is not gonna capture many new modelers? It's funny that they make all kinds of neat new O scale freight cars yet can't relate that same concept to the S platform....DaveB

I strongly suspect that if it wasn't for the UP and NS Heritage programs, the SD70's and ES44's wouldn't have been made at this time.  It was an attempt to catch heritage lightning in an S bottle.  Don't have a clue as to what might have been offered in their place, maybe nothing.

And of course, they dropped the ball there also by not completing the UP series. 

Rusty

I think that MTH dropped the included scale wheels due to the price point. The new freight offerings are comparable to the SHS prices. What made SHS successful was a series of realistic products that were different and at a realistic price that all could afford. Their market was aimed at hi rail but easily converted to scale and the 85/15 rule for sales probably applied.

Rich

Rich

Rusty,

Who knows what will be in the future? The UP series might still be completed. They haven't made a coach for any of the recent passenger offerings. Same with a dining car. Maybe all the scale engine offerings will be in a traditional form first and scale later as in the Berk. Who knows how marketing thinks but you can be sure the traditional line will determine what is produced as that seems to be where the sales are.

Rich

"I think that MTH dropped the included scale wheels due to the price point. The new freight offerings are comparable to the SHS prices. What made SHS successful was a series of realistic products that were different and at a realistic price that all could afford. Their market was aimed at hi rail but easily converted to scale and the 85/15 rule for sales probably applied."

  I can't understand how SHS could sell cars with scale wheels while MTH can't. According to the theory of cheaper per unit as the quantity increases big ole MTH should be able to sell cars for less than little ole SHS? .DaveB

The future of Flyer may very well go down the FlyerChief+ track judging by the response for the Polar Express set, which I'm given to understand is sold out (or should we say fully pre-ordered...)

Of course, basing a marketing plan only off sales from this set may be a red herring, there are apparently many enthusiasts who would be willing to buy one regardless of scale simply because it's the Polar Express. 

The true test will be how the C&O and NKP sets do.

In one respect, if Lionel could increase Flyer sales with more FlyerChief+ offerings, it would be rebuilding the market from the ground up with "cool" entry-level stuff and might lend support to the high end stuff.

Rusty

 "I can't understand how SHS could sell cars with scale wheels while MTH can't. According to the theory of cheaper per unit as the quantity increases big ole MTH should be able to sell cars for less than little ole SHS? .DaveB"

If the size of the market is known from previous SHS sales volumes, quantity increases may not be warranted.

>> I can't understand how SHS could sell cars with scale wheels while MTH can't.

Is it "can't" or is it "won't"?  

One big advantage of having both wheels in the same box is that dealers did not have to order/stock two types of cars.  One size fits all -- sort of -- except for the steam engines.  Thus, dealer investment is reduced significantly and they order more because, sooner or later, it all sells out anyway.  The dealers LOVED having both types of wheels in the same box.

At one time, the cost per wheelset from China was less than a dime.  That minimal incremental cost more than made up for the extra shipping and carrying costs which would have been needed to carry excessive slow-moving inventory.  

MTH clearly is more interested in profit margins than in happy dealers.

Oh.........for the goode olde daze when S was produced by S modelers instead of businessmen.

Ed L.

Well, maybe because SHS went bankrupt, in part, by doing such favors ... and, the scale wheel sets sat unused in roughly 80% of the boxes. 

Bob

SHS didn't go bankrupt, they were done in by Sanda Kan booting them out and the difficulty of finding a new builder.  Just take a look at how long it's taking MTH to reboot the SHS line.

Rusty

>> Well, maybe because SHS went bankrupt, in part, by doing such favors

Let's see if'n I understand this correctly:  You really think SHS went bankrupt because they included both high-rail and scale wheels in the same box.  Do I have your thoughts correct here?

Man-o-man.......what planet are you from?

The Chinese company which manufactured product for SHS refused to accept any new orders from SHS and about 20 other smaller customers so they could concentrate on servicing large customers only.  The types of wheels in the boxes had nothing to do with it. 

SHS never went bankrupt for any reason.  They sold the company.  Simple as that.

Please check your facts before making such outlandish statements.  Life is tough enough without dealing with gross misinformation.

Back to my soldering iron........Ed L.

Don't burn yourself! 

I stand (half) corrected. The inclusion of scale trucks was another significant cost and most of the scale wheel sets do just sit in the boxes.

Bob

PS: The continual misuse and overuse of bold font is off putting, don't you know?

But, all SHS included was the scale wheels, not complete trucks. 

If including scale wheels would have been a financial burden on SHS they would have stopped including them, otherwise they wouldn't have lasted the 20+ years they were in business.

Again, it was Sanda Kan booting them out that did SHS in, not wheelsets.

Plus, SK didn't even have the decency to fulfill all of the contracts in process with the companies they fired.

Rusty

Yeh, yeh, I've got it. Jeez, you must sit there all day with a trigger finger. Don't you have anything else to do? 

Be that as it may, most of the scale wheel sets just waste away in boxes. It is an added expense with limited utility. Unfortunate, but true. Take it up with Mr. Wolf.

Bob

"It is an added expense with limited utility'

 Not if you are trying to attract more modelers to your scale. Guys don't want to spend extra money to add wheels to a car they just paid top dollar for. HO scale equipment  comes with scale wheels so that's what S needs to compete otherwise it will stay a niche toy train segment till the last of the old flyers guys croak then it will dis-appear.....DaveB

See your point, Dave, but it does not appear to be part of MTH's business model. If ~ 80% of whom one attracts to S are (to be) hi-railers (a likely scenario), one is still faced with the extra cost for unused (or underused) scale wheel sets. Take it up with Mr. Wolf ... he is the one you have to convince.

Bob

PS: If the rebound of vinyl is a clue, Flyer (a part of the hi-rail community) may not die away, at least not entirely. Small though it may be (but still bigger than the S scale crowd?), there is likely to be a portion of the hobby who will continue to be charmed by ol' Gilbert's trains. 

That's as likely as all the 3-rail O guys disappearing.

Rusty

"That's as likely as all the 3-rail O guys disappearing"

    There's less AF guys so they should become extinct before the 3 rail crowd. But both don't make much sense in a modern world where 50's trains are pretty much irrelevant. It's not the same world that we old fossils grew up in so we gotta view it thru younger eyes if we wanna remain in the game.There's plenty of prototype railroading going on but the younger generation is seeing a lot different stuff than the old toy trains we saw. If the hobby has a future it needs to move forward with stuff that can attract today's kids thru the scenes they see.Railroading is still interesting, just harder to find since it's moved out of the cities and residential areas to farther out industrial areas and large unit train facilities. But go up on Donner or Tehachapi and neat stuff is still climbing the hill and creating the summit, stuff that the younger guys will want  to model. S scale can just write off the future and dies or it can embrace it with new product and move forward. In the worst case scenario we are forced to model in HO or N scale and in the best we can model in S scale. It's up to the manufacturers to decide who get's our money, we are the customers and are right, they serve at our pleasure.....DaveB

Oh, you are being too logical.

Who would have predicted the resurgence of vinyl? With the younger crowd, yet. It would take a small community of ~ 10,000 in a country of over 300,000,000 to keep Flyer afloat .. a terribly small fraction. One can observe younger guys going around S Fest buying affordable runners to fix up. They are not collectors. Doug Peck tells me that his parts business is pretty good. How big the group will be is open to question, however, the charm of toy trains (particularly US-made toy trains) will always be with us. It's a different mindset having little to do with realism. Smaller, certainly. Disappear, not likely.

About 85% of S gaugers are hi-rail in one form or another. There is a spectrum of enthusiasts ranging from hard core Flyer to modern hi-rail (e.g., AM, MTH, etc.) What does the manditory inclusion of scale wheel sets do for this group? Well-made hi-rail equipment will serve this group just fine.

YMMV.

Bob

All that pre-owned Flyer's gonna have to go somewhere and I'd bet most of it wouldn't be to a landfill.

And, don't forget...  A lot of the scale guys are getting up there, too.

When I got into S in 1985, I had zero interest in Flyer.  As far as I was concerned, Flyer could've dried up and blown away.  I wanted S to be all scale, all the time.

Somewhere along the line, I became interested in American Flyer, first the stuff offered by Lionel, then Postwar Gilbert Flyer.  All the while I was still building my S Scale code 100, Kadee equipped 12v DC plywood empire.

While I have thinned the heard of the Flyonel recently, I now have a more focused collection of it, along with the modest collection of Postwar Gilbert I've accumulated. 

Both collections may still go though some further fine tuning, but I have no intention of disposing of them.

Being involved with Flyer and Scale (plus Hirail S) has made me understand the symbiotic relationship that exists between these are three legs of an S stool.  They all feed off of and couldn't exist in today's world without each other.

Sure, I grumble about some of Lionel's recent decisions, but even if they decide to lean towards upgraded traditional, it still keeps S out there.

To think that S Scale would grow by leaps and bounds if Flyer disappeared off the face of the earth is unrealistic.  If the 85% disappeared, you'd have 100% of the 15%. 

You'd still would have to convince dealers to give up precious shelf or warehouse space to carry "pure" S scale.  The folks that have "too much invested" in their present scale will still have "too much invested."  It takes a certain state of mind to dispose of a scale that one has been in for a long time.

I've made my peace with Flyer some time ago.  Somebody that buys a Polar Express set or picks up some used Gilbert Flyer today just may be interested in upgrading to Scale in the future.

Rusty

"Who would have predicted the resurgence of vinyl? With the younger crowd, yet."

  Certainly not me :>  Much of my music collection is on vinyl but not from choice, it was all that was available when I bought the albums. I play them on an old Philips turntable with Rotel amps thru JBL L-100's and they sound fine but they take up a lot more room than CD's or I tunes files. I think the young guys into vinyl are just the small backlash you see  against all forms of progress. Folks wanna go live in the woods and hunt their food till they get cold or need a doctor then they return to the real world.....DaveB

"All that pre-owned Flyer's gonna have to go somewhere and I'd bet most of it wouldn't be to a landfill."

 Maybe they can shred it up to make some new trains? There's too much of it clogging ebay and train show tables  for all of it to find a home....DaveB

 >> The inclusion of scale trucks was another significant cost and most of the scale wheel sets do just sit in the boxes.

SHS never had "scale trucks" or "high-rail" trucks.   They had "SHS trucks" which could accept wheelsets with either scale or high-rail profiles.  The trucks were all the same -- just the wheel profiles were different.  Thus, there was no additional cost due to the "inclusion of scale trucks".

The smart high-rail guys sold off the scale wheelsets to friends.  The smart scale guys sold off the high-rail wheelsets to other friends.  If the wheels sat in a box, it was because of no effort to make a fast buck with them. 

Let's keep trying for accurate information.  There is a long way to go yet.

Back to my X-acto knife (no chance of burns).....Ed L.

I'm sure the demographics will change and that as the older Flyer collectors move on then the glut that accumulates on the market will force a new level of value across the range which in turn will make it affordable to the next generation of Flyer collectors. In fact it may be a case that as Flyer gets older it may even have a greater appeal to future collector/operators.

What is also going to happen which has also been mentioned is that the scale modellers will find themselves in a similar situation but the chances of finding a direct replacement for a like minded person could be more difficult. If this happens then the chances of any main line manufacturer supporting scale people will be even less.

I'm still looking for the intergraph depot so I can telegraph these posts in...

rusty