@Brad Kowal posted:Lots of good discussion:
Regarding the F40PH, while other MFG's have produced them, they have been lacking in appearance except for Overland Models in 2-Rail brass. True even with the latest Lionel offerings. I question whether any of these other MFG's are really competitors to Sunset. Case in point: F7s and F3's. Everybody has produced these in the past, yet Sunset had a very successful run in both 2 Rail and 3 Rail. Same with the E Units. Sunset continues to bring these out with success.
Note that you are comparing two different demographic bases here. The people that bought into the 3rd rail F and E units don't necessarily go into second generation diesel units. All those F and E units sold were mostly original buyer paint schemes and not secondary owners. Many modelers love to model railroads "Gplden Age" of the late 1940's to late 1950's. Scott M.had a hard time with the FP45 and SDP40F's several years ago along with trying to sell Amtrak cars- both heritage [slumber coach and sleepers] and Bi-Levels [two runs of the El Capitan Amtrak sets netted less than 20 sets made in both scale and 3 rail. How about those SD40-2's? Its been several years and "two order lifes" on EMD's most popular diesel. Only now it seems to be ready for its first production run. Will there be a second run of SD40-2 right after or be another "FP7/SD7/SD9" one run tooling sitting on the sidelines? Is there enough non Lionel/2 rail buyers out there for the popular EMD second generation units?
When I goto 2 rail O Scale clubs I hardly see any second generation diesels running around-never mind contemporary model railroad models.
