Certain companies would like you to think that die cast is more expensive than plastic but it is not. The molding dies are exactly the same and the material is cheaper than plastic. A baretable train or one with unweighted containers would stringline through "small" radius curves. It's another reason the MTH version of the stack cars sucked.
Modern commercial 3d printers can do quite large prints but not in fine detail materials. Scott has looked 3d printing and it ended up significantly more expensive, FOR A MANUFACTURER, than current production technologies. There are zero volume cost savings. So if one costs $100 then 100 cost $10K.
