To Sam Jumper, nobody is wound tight. You're the one who stated a "step backwards." How is it a step backwards? You mean if it's not scale, it's a step backwards? That would be your opinion, being expressed on the 027 and traditional forum (both of which can easily be hi-rail, since the original definition has nothing to do with scale). Maybe what is a step backwards for you is a giant step forwards for many of us on this particular forum.
And to Bwana Bob, how is it "weird for Menard's to then make vehicles not to scale to squeeze onto not to scale flatcars." This is not a new idea... Menards has done these shorter flatcars with vehicles before, and they did them first before the scale flat car, and before the recent introductions of 1:48 vehicles and trailers. To this casual observer, this would be normal.
There are different interests within the very small 3 rail market. There are modelers who want THIS kind of product, and they also happen to be on the right forum to talk about it. Or maybe we should all head over to the 3-rail scale forum to lobby the train makers to make more 027 scale trains 
.
Consider that for the vast majority of the history of 3-rail trains, there were NO scale product lines: You had the 027 line and then the O gauge line. Even today, we use these terms, "traditional" and "semi-scale." Well, gosh golly, that's what Lionel has been for most of their history, until really they went overseas and could afford to invest in all the new scale product tooling of which the traditional products help to pay for. I guess you could call it a subsidy.
Lionel has said at the end of the day, it is their traditional product line of starter sets that pays the bills and keeps them in business. So maybe Lionel should raise the prices 50-100% so that those scale products make the same positive contribution to Lionel's bottom line. Most of the folks complaining about Lionel's prices on scale rolling stock fail to notice that many of those items are priced not too far off from the traditional rolling stock prices. In the case of the US made LionScale, even less than a foreign made traditional car with die cast trucks.
And if the scale products were SO popular, then the train companies would be making individual production in the thousands and not in the dozens. And it's not just Lionel, who takes an undue amount of criticism here. It wasn't long ago when MTH would come out a catalog and then a couple months later, there'd be dozens of cancellations due to lack of pre-orders. I remember looking at the Atlas O website and a full 25% of all the scale products listed were cancelled due to lack of orders.
Even Mike Wolf has said the Railking line is the most popular of the MTH lines, and that the fantasy seasonal Christmas cars are among the best selling. So different strokes for different folks. One doesn't make the other wrong.
So Menards is now making something that appeals to the traditional operator. Good. But fear not... they'll be making something in the near future that will appeal more to the scale operator. It's much less a case of going backwards, then it is a case of good business (and smart) by making products for all the varied interests within this overall small 3-rail market.
