If you were asked 10 years ago about the possibility of Menards building o gauge track, cars and buildings today, what would you say? Probably not no. But "heck no!"
Lots of good points about the difference between Menard's grade and MTH grade, especially if you dare to think about them making engines some day (heck no!"??). But buying a company and actually running it (i.e. John Menards) are two different things. MTH as an investment?
MTH has the people in place. What Menards does for our hobby is it introduces it to a lot of new people. That's pretty powerful. And they currently stock Lionel starter sets for the long holiday season. Remember, too, that Menards depends on Lionel/MTH to run their low priced cars and track.
So currently, Menards introduces people to trains with value prices and cool buildings and then... hands those consumers over to the "real" train companies, where the big money is spent. Seems a little short sighted to me. Isn't the reason for starter sets with minimal margins to get people hooked? And then they got you... for years, spending big money.
But then, like has been mentioned, maybe John Menard is just having fun and is good with allowing people to Save Big Money on the limited items in his train line.
