Will definitely be having operating accessories on my new layout.
I love the operating accessories, not sure I'll put them on my finally (slowly) being built layout One of the reasons I can see is that a lot of the emphasis in recent years has been on the scale side of 3 rail, and they likely feel it doesn't fit, that scale operators wouldn't be interested in an operating coal loader or water tower or whatnot, even if they were scale sized, that they are interested in realism of running the trains (and again, this is me speculating on what those running the show think). For those who love the old accessories, there is so much out there that making more of them won't make sense. On the other hand, if they could make more reliable versions of the old accessories it might sell, some of them were pretty finicky to say the least; the old lionel accessories were interesting rube goldberg devices in some ways, the guys building them were using clever hacks of existing technology, like the open frame motor and the vibrating whatnots, done likely to be economical. With what is available today, small servo motors, and materials, you wouldn't need to recreate the old technology (note: Lionel likely did this when they reproduced them for the nostalgia market). I think to get new and improved accessories would require (to me) there being demand from those who are buying the scale stuff, for the 'toy train' side of things, I think there is just so much out there that brand new copies don't make sense there, though new accessories to go along with things like the Polar express might.
Operating accessories including rolling stock are what drew me to O-Gauge in the first place! I have two dozen or so which will make on to the layout I'm building.
-Greg
You may be very happy with Lionel's catalog tomorrow. Ryan said that 2022 is supposed to be "the year of the accessories" at Lionel.
Mad
Should my local hobby shop have the 2021 Volume 2 catalog tomorrow?
Charlie
I think you can fit the operating accessories in a scale layout. If you have the trains move you can also have the loads, etc. move. The point of the hobby is to have fun, so I've even reverted back to shooting off the 6650 missle car at the 6470 exploding boxcar. But, you can fit the coal loaders, log stuff, milk cars in a scale layout. I'm still kicking myself over not buying that Right-of-Way chlorine car in the 90s and trying to get a culvert loader/unloader and kitbashing the culverts into chlorene and sulphur dioxide one ton tanks for a wastewater plant(I did that for 5 years as a career).
@Choo Choo Charlie posted:Mad
Should my local hobby shop have the 2021 Volume 2 catalog tomorrow?
Charlie
Maybe; maybe not. Depends upon if Lionel shipped them to their dealers prior to launch on their website.
Contact your LHS (local hobby shop) and ask them!
@Rich883 posted:Good question Dennis. For me I like animation, and have some on the layout, but operating accessories just seem like out of date toys when you compare them to the detail of today’s trains and many structures.
Well said, and another way of looking at the apparent lack of operating accessories featured on hi-rail layouts is that they, with few exceptions, have not evolved in detail and realism as the trains have over the decades. With some ingenuity and imagination this static trend in accessories, and structures for that matter, could be reversed.
