Jonathan
Good point on Weaver. Certainly a big part of the O gauge market for a period of years. MTH was able to expand with increasingly realistic sound, details, and product lines. Kind of left Weaver and Williams behind in these ways. I must say I am a huge fan of Williams and own many of their passenger locomotives. I vouch for their reliability and affordability. Same with Weaver.
In the 1990s I lived in an apartment very near the Norfolk Southern's ex NKP line. In those years the CSX had an intermodal train coming from the NYSW operating thru on NS with NYSW power, trains 290 & 291. There was also an intermodal train from the CP with Soo Line, CP, and Milwaukee Road bandit power, trains 083, and 084. My O Scale train buys were mainly aimed at recreating the real NS operations I enjoyed nearby. Lionels first Dash8 in NS and NYSW Dash8 were some of my first O scale buys. Then, MTH offered the SD60M in Soo Line, and a C30-7 in NS. They were scale and had real sounds instead of awful buzzer horns. The MTH C30-7 had a very accurate sort of hoarse sounding horn just like the ones rolling by up the street from my O scale carpet central. Weaver provided me with a nice Soo Line SD40-2 but it had an awful electronic horn. And so MTH began being my main source for trains. Those early MTH locos had a lot of mileage. I must say, that Soo Line SD60M eventually suffered P1 death, as did the C30-7. (I still operate many P1 locomotives that somehow avoided the known problems of that era). I was for a while hesitant on MTH locos, but with P3 my MTH roster has swelled and all (exception being the Turbotrains) are excellent trains. MTH is about 50% of my collection with Atlas, Williams, Lionel, Weaver, K-line, GGD, making up the rest. I recently finally replaced the SD60M with an even more accurate Lionel Legacy version with correct windows. Competition brought about increasingly better trains. But I firmly believe that MTH raised the bar, and brought life to O Gauge, and competition which forced more detail, features.
