Jim-
With brass production runs in the 50's and 100's the popularity of a car at
$400 or a locomotive at $2000, brass is no indication at all of the
advisability of cutting molds for an injection molded product.
The fact that Walthers is the only "big" manufacturer to venture into the
realm of passenger cars (the IHC foray does not count) is a clue. Atlas,
and LifeLike (who has been cranking out passenger locomotives till the cows
come home and is not convinced there is any market for passenger cars!!!)
have not made any commitment to passenger cars. Bachmann has never added to
their Santa Fe full dome or single heavyweight Pullman car. We'll see if
Walthers is happy with the sales on their cars; IMHO they are well
engineered and a very interesting concept, but they need sales of their cars
if they are ever to get to everyone's favorite prototypes.
There should be a good market for passenger cars in all scales; freight cars
are being covered very well indeed. Within the last 15 years we have gone
from having a generic Athearn 40' boxcar to (how many??) exact reproductions
of specific prototypes from a bunch of new, quality manufacturers.
I think passenger car modeling is ripe for expansion, but the knowledge base
has to be expanded. There have been few good articles on passenger cars and
the average model railroader does not understand them at all (still
insisting on the dome car to go along with his Pennsy train) or worrying
about getting "stuck" with an extra baggage car.
I hope that the $60-70 business car blows off the shelves. We have good
data on all aspects the market from the N Scale version, so it should be a
fair test of the Premium Plastic market in HO.
We'll see...
Charlie
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