It's funny Allan, how every manufacturer talks about the high cost of new tooling, yet there are always modelers in the hobby who argue that point. Not only is it the high costs of the dies themselves, but the research and development that has to be done first, especially for a scale product. And then there's the cash outlay for all of that, which means that has to come out of the profits of other products.
Well, this isn't China, but this just appeared a few hours ago. Bear in mind this is a basic traditional box car without all the added detail parts (added assembly time) of the usual scale product. And yet this is still quite time consuming. I dare not even think of something like a locomotive. Also consider that with US production, you are still dependent on foreign made components: In this particular case, the truck sets. On a locomotive - even the most basic starter LionChief type - you would need all the circuit boards of every type, the motors and the trucks all stocked up before you could begin any production run.
Any US made production like this is great. But you are still in need of foreign made parts, which also adds to cost as all those components have to be shipped to the US.
