could have not said it better!!
We will never see a mechanical E-unit in new trains again. Too many parts, expensive to build, too much labor to assemble, the coil is a current hog, and by today's standards too noisy. The last time Lionel used a mechanical E-unit was at the dawn of railsounds 2, the blue and yellow Santa Fe F-3's around 1995. It would be like new televisions with old mechanical rotary switch channel changers.
ZWPOWER13 posted:I have all of the CC sets and all of the PWC series sets and single items. This was such a great series. Everything I owned worked perfectly out of the box, and the prices were decent.
There is still more they can do. Like the Milwaukee Road F3's and EP-5's and many more sets with different cars that have not been re introduced yet. I wish they would of continued one of the series.
Although I have several scale engines, cars and sets, I prefer the older toy trains. (PW, MPC, LTI)The new items coming out are nice, but to me that's not what Lionel is.
Hear, hear!!
The EP-5s, more F3s, would also be on my list. Erie AA Alcos. The list goes on.
Chuck Sartor posted:We will never see a mechanical E-unit in new trains again. Too many parts, expensive to build, too much labor to assemble, the coil is a current hog, and by today's standards too noisy. The last time Lionel used a mechanical E-unit was at the dawn of railsounds 2, the blue and yellow Santa Fe F-3's around 1995. It would be like new televisions with old mechanical rotary switch channel changers.
Funny you mentioned this loco. Just last week, I removed the E-unit from my blue and yellow Santa Fe F3 ABA set and replaced it with an ACMC electronic unit. This was a strange locomotive, as it contained both an E-unit and Railsounds. The buzzing of the E-unit completely drowned out the Railsounds. Another reason you won't see the mechanical E-unit anytime soon.
I believe there is still a market for conventional Lionel. Look at it this way. Back in the '70s, when we all wanted the trains of our youth, we were buying those trains, literally from our days gone by. At some point those trains either became too expensive for some of us or they took just a bit more repair than was feasible to get working again. Plus they were getting more scarce.
Not all of want the high tech trains, nor do we want the very toylike sets Lionel seems to be offering to the beginner market. Some of us want to open the box place a train on the track and move a handle on a transformer. Electronic E units have been around long enough to be reliable. So it's a no-brainer for Lionel to be using them. Do we all have to have sound, I don't think so. So the cost of producing trains that don't have all the bells and whistles of the high tech trains has to be something Lionel should consider.
The bottom line is that some of us would like to have trains that run right out of the box. And we would like to be able to expand our "Low Tech" train empire with more of the same.
I just got the B&O Service Station set with the RDC's from the 70's. It is super-quiet, and runs as smoothly as if it had a can motor.
Jon 
I would like to see the MPC Burlington Route Chrome F3's made again with two motors, horn and bell sound.
