Yeah, it'd be really great to see something like this, or any recent sort of diesel, done up as a modern equivalent to the 1950's rendition of the Alco FA. Along the lines of what MTH did with a few of the Rugged Rails releases, which is not their market. Lionel has the bulk of the starter set market, and it'd be awesome to see them put some more effort into that.
I think Lionel has gone way over board on the high end scale side of the market, and yet people still aren't happy. They're putting a great deal of money into the smallest part of the market (size wise, maybe not individual spending wise) which is also the most difficult to please.
When Lionel came out with the starter versions of the Dockside switcher and the 0-8-0, traditional guys were thrilled. "Wow, something new for a change." You didn't hear anywhere near the amount of grumbling and complaining that you read as with the last Lionel Vision line announcement, where 2 out 3 threads here were closed because of it.
I guess Lionel doesn't put any effort into new products for the starter/traditional market because they think we're content... because we don't grumble about every new release and what's going to be wrong with it. In the recent Notch6 interview with Howard Hitchcock, it was a telling moment when he mentioned the market "funnel." First time I've heard that since Jerry Calabrese left Lionel. Hmmm, maybe they're thinking they can't go on forever selling small runs of $1,000-$2,000 engines and still stay in business.
Granted, historically for Lionel, freight sets sell better than passenger sets. So maybe this particular engine isn't the candidate. But there are other modern locomotives to chose from. On the other hand, if they did chose this one to do a selectively compressed model that would look good with traditional line cars, I doubt any of us 0/027 guys would complain if it were done in a multitude of roads names, whether it's prototypically accurate or not.
Heck, I've seen plenty of videos of high-end scale steam engines pulling modern coil cars and auto racks. Or videos of Vision line modern diesels pulling woodside reefers. So a Siemens Charger in Norfolk Southern? Why not!
Sorry Swafford!! I needed to borrow your classic topic headline!!
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