I'm very excited about the UP Excursion 21" cars next year. Especially if the "FLAG" car is included in the set!
Originally Posted by 86TA355SR:
I'm very excited about the UP Excursion 21" cars next year. Especially if the "FLAG" car is included in the set!
Ditto in my case. The "Flag" baggage car that MTH did a few years back is impossible to find in the secondary market.
"Some here make it sound as though (18") 72' cars are not prototypical".
18" cars are more practical for most of us who do not have the real estate required for 72+" radius curves. For me, the 18" cars are a good compromise vice the full scale 21" cars, which would look ridiculous on my layout.
Originally Posted by Landsteiner:
I suspect that all this handwringing about Lionel soaking the consumer is ignoring the realities of production of high end locomotives. Lionel is just about the only manufacturer producing stuff that requires new tooling, and they are doing quite a bit of it. This is despite the almost certain dramatic increases in production costs in China, the substantial decreases in consumers interested in high end three rail O gauge, and the resultant striking increases in overhead per item produced. I'd guess the high end stuff is made in quantities of 1,000 or even less these days, compared with several times that in the 1990s and 2000s.
One only has to look at the costs of less expensive and higher volume items like the Lion Chief stuff and Lion Chief Plus. The new command equipped three loco remote is peanuts compared with Legacy and DCS. The locos are all at street prices a fraction of the high end. That's what volume does for you, even with new tooling.
The high end is going to be ever more expensive as the volume sold decreases and production and tooling costs increase. That's the reality I see.
The PRR b6 appears to be the exact kline tooling from 2003.
The 2-8-0's shown in the latest catalog appear to be the same, tired tooling first introduced in the 2000 catalog.
I believe that the investment ownership group sets the course and they are not interested in making only a modest profit.
Originally Posted by Jim S:
. For me, the 18" cars are a good compromise vice the full scale 21" cars, which would look ridiculous on my layout.
72' (18") cars "ARE" full scale. So are 64' (16") cars. The real question you need to ask, did the RR your modeling ever run 86' cars (21") especially during the earlier steam era?? Most did not...
Joe
Originally Posted by graz:
The PRR b6 appears to be the exact kline tooling from 2003.
The 2-8-0's shown in the latest catalog appear to be the same, tired tooling first introduced in the 2000 catalog.
The B6s may have the same superstructure, I have not seen a direct comparison to my K-Line one but the drivers and drive rods were changed to be more prototypical. The K-Lines are evenly spaced while the lionel has the front set of drivers set further forward.
The UP/SP 2-8-0s are the same as before but the ones lettered for other roads have lost the number boards. Minor stuff I agree but it appears Lionel is turning a corner here.
Pete
"I believe that the investment ownership group sets the course and they are not interested in making only a modest profit."
As far I know, the private equity firm which owns a significant share of Lionel has little or no day to day, month to month involvement in Lionel's product planning and marketing. Indeed, significant ownership in the company is in the hands of recent CEO Jerry Calabrese.
As evidence against the point, Lionel starter sets are, by historic standards, dirt cheap in many cases. Loss leaders if you will. To get people into the hobby, not squeeze the consumer. And as venture capitalists, they have already owned the firm for far longer than most quick-hit-turnaround-artists will tolerate. Thus I'm guessing they are interested in solid income, long term potential for capital gains and other sound economic principles that will not benefit from short term soak the consumer strategies. And knowing what I know of Mike Reagan, Jon Zahornacky and others they would have no interest in working for a company that was interested only in short term outrageous profits. So on balance, I think the hypothesis that the high prices of some items are attempts at extorting money from the poor ignorant public is not credible. Volume is the explanation that makes most sense to me. Low volume equals high prices. High volume equals more reasonable prices. Follow the dollars.
As for tooling, it appears that several diesels and steamers are new tooling in this catalog and the last one, which is several more than any other vendor 
. The Lion Chief and Lion Chief Plus locos and the universal remote are also new tooling in many cases. What more does anyone want? Lionel is essentially the only firm doing any innovation in the three rail hobby in the last five years. No one expects gratitude, I'm sure, but let's keep it real.
Originally Posted by graz:
...It was the slap I needed to cease my spending and lock down with the small collection that I currently have.
I've been feeling this way for a few years.
Jeff Davis
Originally Posted by Hancock52:
Originally Posted by 86TA355SR:
I'm very excited about the UP Excursion 21" cars next year. Especially if the "FLAG" car is included in the set!
Ditto in my case. The "Flag" baggage car that MTH did a few years back is impossible to find in the secondary market.
And ridiculously expensive when you do....
Landsteiner,
Well said! I agree with everything you said. Somehow a price increase to pay for their increased costs (China), inflation and adding new features (whistle steam) is soaking. I just call it paying for what is costs, and its OK if Lionel makes a profit.
I don't like the fact that the price is higher, but I understand it. The bottom line is if its cost is too much and it not worth it, then I don't buy it. The market will decide. I've said before I would rather pay more for a higher quality engine but have less of them. The worst is buying an engine that falls short of your expectations but you buy it anyway because there is nothing better and then it just sits on the shelf. Now that's expensive.
Rich
Originally Posted by Norton:
The B6s may have the same superstructure, I have not seen a direct comparison to my K-Line one but the drivers and drive rods were changed to be more prototypical. The K-Lines are evenly spaced while the lionel has the front set of drivers set further forward.
Take another look at your K-Line B6sb. The drivers are correct with more space between the lead and middle drivers than there is between the middle and trailing drivers. Here's my K-Line:
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Thanks Bob. I stand corrected. I recall Lionel pointed out their version would have correctly spaced drivers. Maybe implying it would be different from their own B6??
Pete
Originally Posted by Landsteiner:
Volume. As in low volume. High production costs per SKU. Simple Business 101 if I'm right about most of these discrepancies being related to production costs and overhead for low volume items. ...
Originally Posted by Landsteiner:
...
The high end is going to be ever more expensive as the volume sold decreases and production and tooling costs increase. That's the reality I see.
As I said earlier, I don't doubt enthusiasts will "figure a way" to justify the high prices, and not even feel all that bad about spending those big bucks. They just won't buy other items... and hopefully the marketplace is still big enough to make that business model work.
OTOH, there are always exceptions: namely, we have the Veterans and First Responders SD60E's, which I'm predicting may be Lionel's top selling BTO engines to date (unless MTH significantly cuts into that market with their offerings). But we don't see a "break" in the pricing there. BTO cuts both ways... Lionel has pushed the risk into its dealer network, while leveling the playing field among dealers of all sizes to compete for pre-order business. This has no doubt reeked havoc among the largest dealers who were ensured reasonably high-volume sales by ordering larger quantities of product at improved "quantity pricing". Yet whether Lionel produces 300 SD60E's or 3,000 SD60E's, the consumers will be shelling out $520-$550 on a $650 MSRP. No economies of scale on those beauties for consumers. Just solidly high pricing because those items will sell well. 
So the volume argument only goes so far. There's no one-size-fits all answer here.
BTW, I also don't buy into the argument that Lionel is the only importer bringing innovation (i.e., new tooling) into the 3-rail marketplace these days. 3rd Rail (Sunset/GGD) and Atlas-O have been right up there as well, despite the challenging manufacturing environments overseas. Let's call it like it is without indulging in the orange Kool-Aid, please. 
David
"3rd Rail (Sunset/GGD) and Atlas-O have been right up there as well, despite the challenging manufacturing environments overseas. Let's call it like it is without indulging in the orange Kool-Aid, please."
Innovation isn't only tooling. It's technology, like apps, LCS, the ZW-L, new Powerhouses, Lion Chief and Lion Chief Plus, etc. Who is marketing three rail trains to families and children? Not 3rd Rail and Atlas. Not anyone except Lionel in reality today.
3rd Rail, by making brass models, is a boutique manufacturer making runs of 100 or less, an order of magnitude fewer locos than Lionel. Their prices reflect that hand assembly. Their prices are similar to Lionel if not higher. Thus that tooling innovation, tiny as it is in size, and rather irrelevant to the overall marketplace, has its cost. Indeed, bringing up 3rd Rail supports my hypothesis that a lot of the pricing issue is volume and new tooling driven.
Atlas has not been doing much new O gauge tooling, at least in the last 5 years, for various reasons. Compared with Lionel, they are a fringe player in this market. Important to some 3 rail scale fans, but otherwise a producer an order of magnitude or even smaller than that, compared with Lionel and MTH.
As for your remark about orange Kool-Aid, bad mouthing those who disagree with you as apologists is extremely poor form. Try to stick to the subject matter rather than engaging in personal attacks.
Need to get rid of Adobe Flash catalogs.
I like the new catalog. No catalog will ever satisfy everyone. I found 3 or 4 items I liked, but it's nice not like the volume one loaded with tons of new stuff. It's not meant to be that type of catalog. We are still waiting for volume 1 stuff to arrive. So it's basically an update to volume 1 with a few more things added. I'm not going into prices as everything goes up, so the price is the price.
Originally Posted by illinoiscentral:
Need to get rid of Adobe Flash catalogs.
Not going to happen for the foreseeable future. Adobe has provided a significant amount of resources to streamline providing catalogs out to the web. Restaurants seem to be the primary beneficiary for these tools but Lionel and MTH seem to make use of them as well.
I imagine there's something that Flash still allows that the open HTML5 standard does not. It's not like HTML5 doesn't work - you can view the catalog on Apple's devices where Flash is nowhere to be found.
Originally Posted by Landsteiner:
I suspect that all this handwringing about Lionel soaking the consumer is ignoring the realities of production of high end locomotives. Lionel is just about the only manufacturer producing stuff that requires new tooling, and they are doing quite a bit of it. This is despite the almost certain dramatic increases in production costs in China, the substantial decreases in consumers interested in high end three rail O gauge, and the resultant striking increases in overhead per item produced. I'd guess the high end stuff is made in quantities of 1,000 or even less these days, compared with several times that in the 1990s and 2000s.
One only has to look at the costs of less expensive and higher volume items like the Lion Chief stuff and Lion Chief Plus. The new command equipped three loco remote is peanuts compared with Legacy and DCS. The locos are all at street prices a fraction of the high end. That's what volume does for you, even with new tooling.
The high end is going to be ever more expensive as the volume sold decreases and production and tooling costs increase. That's the reality I see.
In recent magazine reviews, the L Chief Plus GP7 was the same suggested retail price as an MTH railking SD diesel. The MTH unit has wire handrails and full DCS while the Lionel used postwar tooling, stamped handrails and the closed Lionchief electronics.
"In recent magazine reviews, the L Chief Plus GP7 was the same suggested retail price as an MTH railking SD diesel. The MTH unit has wire handrails and full DCS while the Lionel used postwar tooling, stamped handrails and the closed Lionchief electronics."
I'd rather have the Lion Chief Plus loco because it is, in my experience, more reliable, simple and comes with all that is necessary for independent control of the loco, i.e., command control. It also costs about 10% less at street prices I've seen. The dealer markup is much smaller with MTH than with Lionel so there is more room for discounting. With the RailKing one has full DCS, it's true. I consider it somewhat less reliable and simple to use than Lion Chief and one still needs to spring for a TIU and DCS handheld for about $300 to have independent control of a RailKing PS3 loco. Different strokes for different folks, but the Lion Chief Plus loco is more beginner friendly in those respects.
Jeez more Kool-Aid references. Time for new material.
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Because of what I collect/run, the only thing I would've bought was the second place design your own boxcar.
I have a question to throw out everyone: If the second or third place contest boxcars could be offered, would you buy one?
I see a good design in the second place car that just seems to be left on the drawing board. So I started wondering if there is any interest, could we persuade the LCCA or TCA to offer these as possible club car offerings?
Originally Posted by MartyE:
Jeez more Kool-Aid references. Time for new material.
I was partial to Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red!
As a side note I'd buy a second place car offering.
Jerry
Well stated Landsteiner...
Regardless of whatever logical explanation you offer for Lionel's pricing it is all for naught. Some folks will happily spend $2K for 8 GGD passenger cars while simultaneously complaining about a street price of $1.4K for a Lionel FEF.
I attempted to start a thread where people could complain/rationalize/explain/discuss/cry about pricing but it was deleted. My thought was that thread would be the forum for posts about pricing ranging from insightful to insulting while keeping this thread focused on the products presented in the new catalog.
That didn't work and we have been heading down "the prices are too high road" since about the second page...I think. Oh well.
Anybody have a clue why Lionel selected road number 838 for one of the FEF-3 models? Yes, it is stuffed in the Cheyenne Round House as a parts diner for #844, but it is NOT one of the 4-8-4s that was ever up-graded to the Worthington Feedwater Heater System.
Hot Water, probably for the same reason the chose Southern GP-9s with an 800 gallon fuel tank instead of one with a regular size. The number was close enough to the rest.
I wanted the FEF 844 in the Grey but when I found out the passenger car set (4) were already sold out I cancelled my order. It would have been nice to have that plus all 6 cars. Can't see just 2 City of LA cars behind it.
I guess I I will just wait to see what happens in 2016, plus I have on order three items. The NYC J3a, the KCS Southern Belle and I am still waiting for the UP BB Caboose. Maybe it is not a bad omen.
Manufacturing costs are going up - tools and dies cost a fortune - anywhere from $25K and up depending on many variables, that just tooling. Then lets look at product development, Q&A, Fixed and variable overhead, shipping, thats just at the factory - from FOB to Landed Cost (into the USA) their is typically 10% ~ 12% upside. FOB -= $100.00 LC then hits maybe $112.00 just to get it into LA -or wherever they bring it in. That 10% is shipping, insurance, customs etc. Then you get to ship it Lionel or MTH or any other manufacturer. Tack on 30% for all the local support - marketing, web pages, catalogs, etc (by the way, catalogs cost a fortune to make) then tack on dealer support - you end up with a set price. BTO let's any manufacturer become more efficient.
Most of my local dealers don't carry the high end products, they are too small and don't have the cash flow to purchase and display. They too have gone to "if you want it, you need to pre order it and put down 25%. If you don't take it, you get your 25% back if I and when I sell it."
Catalogs - extremely expensive to produce even when you have volume. Look at Shutterfly - $30.00 for a hard back book with 12 pages. Maybe not the best example but that is $2.50 +/- per page, Lionel and MTH spare no expense on the catalogs. Well done and for the most part you get what you see.
If I were Lionel, MTH or anyone else - the only place you would see a catalog is on the web. By the time you design, develop, photo, print and assemble my bet is each catalog cost $5.00 to $10.00 to make. Then distribution costs are a fortune due to the weight. That money could be spent on more product development, features and technology. A web catalog would be a fraction to develop.
Bottom line - manufacturers and the few remaining dealers need to make money. Supporting brick and mortar is expensive.
As Rich B. points out ==> I would rather pay more for an product I really like and will use that just buy something to shelve.
Is the hobby getting expensive - yes, it is and for some folks that happened months or years ago. I am in the selective purchase mode. I like 3 items and have or will pre order. But that means I may have to let a few items pass in 2016.
Rich B. - Greyhound FEF - the colors pop. I just re-oredred. I was disappointed in not being able get the City of LA cars - so I will just have to see if they are available from a forum member.
Love Lionel but the engines are too expensive for something they won't have parts for.
PSU1980,
I'm with ya, the Greyhound is a nice change from black.
Rich
Happy to see new small steamers in the book, as opposed to more High End Mallets.
Wish the Consolidation (My favorite wheel arrangement) were an LC+, with Walsharts valve gear.
Nothing I really want since it seems to have avoided early diesel Santa Fe and modern UP.
My tertiary interest of Southern railroad is underwhelmed as the Southern 630 appears to be so different from the prototype. I would have liked to have paired with with my Southern GP30 2594 to enact some TVRM excursions.
Lastly, as many have said, I'm mainly tempted by the NS SD60E Honoring Veterans scheme coming from a family with a service background. Not sure if that's enough to warrant a purchase.
Ok, so taking the time and really looking at the catalog and if I had lots of money to spend there are some attractive buys here for a volume II catalog....
Sure would like a set of these, but not for 1000.00 ?!?!
Anyone notice Lionel fixed the pilots? Well at least in the catalog art....
I'm a real sucker for white walls and added pin stripes... nice job here Lionel! But alas I already have first addition in black so I may have to pass?
This 2-8-0 has some character, really like this one.
These cars are no-brainers... and I will be buying these. True diamonds in the rough...
non-smoking and smoking cabeese are nice here... would like both of these...
I will need quite a few of these if my Dr. Evil plan works, and my wallet can hold out....
At first I thought these were scale but alas... no....so the big question is when will the scale signals come back?!? They are desperately needed Lionel!!!!!!!!
So not a Killer catalog for my wallet cause I can live without if I have too... not like last year around Christmas... practically had to sell the farm, and I did not even purchase a Big-Boy... yet.
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Originally Posted by J Daddy:
....practically had to sell the farm, and I did not even purchase a Big-Boy... yet.
Tried to send you an e-mail, not listed in profile. There's a reasonably listed one here, not mine either.
I love being the temptation...
Originally Posted by 86TA355SR:
Originally Posted by J Daddy:
....practically had to sell the farm, and I did not even purchase a Big-Boy... yet.
Tried to send you an e-mail, not listed in profile. There's a reasonably listed one here, not mine either.
I love being the temptation...
Saw the listing. If I buy. I will buy from my LHS. He has them for the pre order price and 6months lay-away.
The new Lionel Consolidation is a Harriman (SP/UP) prototype. The valve gear on the model is prototypical. You may, however, get your wish in a couple of years. Lionel is said to have bought the tooling for the Weaver Consolidation, which has either Walschaerts or the very similar Baker valve gear (I can never remember which is which without a captioned picture. That's a really nice little engine.
Originally Posted by Drydock:
Happy to see new small steamers in the book, as opposed to more High End Mallets.
Wish the Consolidation (My favorite wheel arrangement) were an LC+, with Walsharts valve gear.
Originally Posted by J Daddy:
...
not like last year around Christmas... practically had to sell the farm, and I did not even purchase a Big-Boy... yet.
Indeed... last November/December nearly all the big-ticket items shipped at once... Lionel's Berkshire locomotives including the Polar Express Black Berkshire, along with the P/E Gold Berk and matching coaches; Cab Forwards (prototype AND fantasy Daylight schemes); and of course, the V/L Big Boys. Did I forget anything??? 
And if all those weren't enough to put a dent in one's bank account, 3rd Rail also delivered its GM Train of Tomorrow!!! Then again, if you bought ALL the other stuff, the GM ToT was just a rounding error. 
David
