Interesting comments from so many people. An era is coming to and end. I remember when he was a kid working at York with Jerry Williams in the Purple Hall. But now I have a question. Because of Mike and MTH, Lionel was kept at bay on pricing. Even now, here they go pushing that price up and up many times for a re-issued product with a slightly newer electronics board. MTH kept their products at a straight price. In 2000, their Premier Big Boy was $1,399.99 and later, in the 2010's it was $1,499.99 (these are approximations) Back in 1990 I remember Lionel trying to raise those prices on their newer products which Mike then was helping to produce. But in 1995, MTH released a locomotive that shocked the O gauge/scale world, a highly detailed, die-cast UP Challenger and it was priced $1,399.99. Lionel's prices had to start coming back down or MTH would have put them out back then. Both companies had been keeping their pricing fairly standard since then but, as we all see, Lionel is starting that price push again. They are now at $2,100.00 for many locomotives all because they load a little bit more electronic function to it.. My father once said that if it weren't for MTH during the first decade of this century (my father had a hobby shop then) Lionel's prices woud ahve been twice and maybe in some cases three times higher because of the name. MTH kept them at bay. No one else could do it. 3rd Rail - different market, Weaver, Atlas - too small, K-Line was coming on but they got put out 15 years ago so there is no one to challenge Lionel UNLESS, as Mike alluded to, some of his employees, some of whom have been with him for decades and know the business by now as good as he does, can continue under a new name or such. A lot of options are on the board. Like GunrunnerJohn said, I am a bit concerned about getting service and replacement parts for DCS. I guess it's time to go through and put Legacy in everything? Legacy is really good, equal to DCS, but there are still a few things that you can do with DCS that you cannot do with Legacy and the one thing I really like is the ability to customize your individual volumes. Another story for another time. As Pete said above, maybe Lionel would buy the DCS system and rights and be able to offer it like ERR. ERR is Lionel, so why is 3rd Rail doing it? Just weird!!!
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