Fascinating concept you have there, Marty.
Maybe Lionel is in a "Catch-22" situation. I recall the article by (I think) Dave Olson in past OGR where he said, "everyone has a Smart or cell Phone" and that was the lightbulb moment for the Base 3 design. That's somewhat assumptive, however. It may be true, but not everybody likes using them; and not to beat a dead horse, some of us want to escape the digital-virtual world when we descend into our basement kingdoms and/or disaster areas 
There's likely a loss or alienation of certain % of the market due to modern trains and control systems getting too complex to use (this applies across the board of all companies). I still think collectors drive Lionel sales revenue, and a % of them will never build a layout, and so for them the control systems are irrelevant. If my hunch is correct, that brings the discussion back to the cost factor for Lionel's investment board: is it worth investing x dollars for a new handheld controller when x% of our customers would never buy it.
