Yeah, the scraping of the locomotive across the tabletop was annoying at least. If I were them I would be flooding the S social media with close up photos of the engine and other information to get the buzz going.
And once again they do a fantasy train, Gilbert Gravel. Hmm, why not Granite Rock, who had steam engines, one very similar to the docksider that is now hauling the passenger train for the California Railroad Museum?
I see two things here that, IMHO, don't bode well for their faith in the S market growing; 1)NO printed catalog, we just get an online one, so you can't just share with others easily. Not everyone has high speed internet abilities. 2)only building enough for advanced orders--no thought to how popular it might become once a few folks have theirs in hand. Having product around--READY TO DELIVER--was once considered standard practice and part of the cost of doing business. Just In Time production doesn't balance well with niche markets like toy trains--IMHO. It use to be that if you had faith in future sales, you had product made to fill that upcoming demand. Past runs of the Berks seem to show an ongoing interest in the engines.
