I went to the National Train Show today. I had a nice talk with Andy Edleman of MTH. According to Andy, pre-orders of the F-units have been decent. He expects more sales once they are released. The F-units are using the O scale PS3 boards. The switchers will be next. Their new boards are now complete. The 2-8-0 boards are not done yet so they will come last. All in all he estimates it will take about 3 years before they have all of the SHS reruns out. I asked him about new tooling, and his answer was it all depends on sales of the former SHS products. He seems hesitant to invest in a market that he all but admitted that they don't quite have a handle on. I told him that it seemed strange to gauge interest for new products from sales of existing products that have been out for decades. His response was that he felt that the MTH PS3 electronics would make all the difference. So there you have it... It will be about 3 years before you see anything new from MTH, and only if they sell enough of the reissues.
This is exactly in line with what I said almost two years ago. My own personal opinion is that MTH has it's priorities weighted firmly in HO and European with O and S falling into line respectively. I don't blame them one bit. The HO market is huge and seems to be booming right now. They have a lot of O scale tooling that they can upgrade with PS3 without new tooling costs. That goes right to the bottom line. I think that S is an experiment for them. I'm sure they can turn a profit just re-releasing the existing SHS tooling. If it sells well then they may offer new tooling. If it doesn't, then who knows. I will say that Andy said that they want to be in S for the long term though. I hope they are. I really look forward to seeing something new from them. It's just hard to wait so long.
