jonnyspeed posted:He still says 80%-90% of his business is Hi-Rail and while he likes "scale", there aren't enough "scale" modelers to sell to. I'm not 100% in agreement with him here. I'm not sure his models are frankly up to the standards of many scale modelers. They certainly aren't as good as HO or O models.The truth is that AM has never built a model to the level of Bachmann, Atlas, or MTH... Let alone something like ScaleTrains.com. So while he may only sell 10% scale I'm not sure that means that the S community is 90% Hi-Rail. I don't think he ever made a model good enough and detailed enough to test the theory. If ScaleTrains.com made an S scale SD40-2 would they sell more than the AM GP35? Interesting thought experiment, but we'll never have to worry about it happening.
We'll probably never know. Anybody remember this? The year was 2014 and the project seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. Contemporary tooling and road-specific details that would have blown the doors off anything AM makes.
Instead, after four years, the SD45 resides in S scale purgatory. The last I heard was in the final analysis was it would cost too much to build. And without provisions for Flyer compatibility only a very small customer base would be interested.
It's been reported recently that a vanilla 30 year old Overland brass SD40-2 went for over $800.00 on da bay. Nice looking model, no paint, no command control, no sound. While I've been known to buy certain "caviar" models, an everyday type of locomotive like an SD40-2 is not on that list, especially at $800 plus. I would be overjoyed if there was an AM equivalent.
Rusty
