@prrhorseshoecurve posted: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.
All valid points. There is additional information that we do know along with information that we don't know.
With regards to clubs, they just don't work anymore. A club matures and takes on a culture of it's own. New people become interested, however they're told "no" so many times they eventually loose interest and go away. There are exceptions, but too far and few between for us to use clubs as a measure of interest for the hobby.
Whenever a MFG produces a modern locomotive or car, they sell out and you don't find the stuff for sale very often. I'm specifically thinking about the Overland Models Brass SD90MAC, AC4400 and Atlas MP15DC and SD40. I don't want to get too deep into this discussion, however the point I'd like to make is that there are modern modelers out there. They're just not as easy for us to see.
What we don't know is why Sunset initially had difficulty attracting orders for the SD40-2. Was it really because of a lack of interest in a modern diesel? I think it has more to do with the current Sunset market, than a current overall interest in models. Unless you have an interest in the older stuff as well as the newer stuff, a modern modeler probably knows little about Sunset. As they produce more modern models, that should change. We will see.
One positive note for "O" Scale: With regards to the Chicago March O Scale Meet; more names are being added to the mailing list than those removed. We need more of the younger segment of the hobby to attend these meets to encourage the mfg's to produce more modern models!
