david1 posted:Swafford posted:Just curious...................What is too big for Menards market?
I meant the size of the car themselves. I don't believe they will do scale sized freight cars, close maybe but not true scale.
I also think Menards has their niche and it is not building scale freight cars.
Dave
From what we have seen and much of which has been verified, David is clearly mostly correct.
John Menard, a TCA member, is a tried and true toy train guy, and the Menards product development team is drawing a lot of ideas from him. It really is a slice of Lionel postwar and MPC days brought into the 21st century at very affordable prices.
A lot of the product is either based on or uses old Williams tooling, which in turn was based on Lionel postwar freight cars. It was from the start a cost-effective way to offer new products without stepping into more costly forms of product development.
While there is nothing to stop Lionel from creating all new tooling, Menards has remained conservative in its largely successful train line production. So unless the production factories it is working with have access to scale centerflow hoppers and similar scale products intended for other companies to use, Menards isn’t likely to produce any at this time.
Menards has expanded beyond the old tooling for some of its scale-like freight cars. Those flat cars that use plastic frames and MDF decks are a way for Menards to offer something that doesn’t require extensive injection-mold tooling. And, of course, Menards’ mostly MDF buildings likewise don’t require injection molding either.
I like Frank Stafford’s paint schemes and ideas and hope he continues to present them. But I have to agree Menards won’t have any such scale freight cars, and certainly locomotives, on the market any time soon.
