BigAl posted:Time is over ! At the extremly shrinking market of modelrailroads "S" is a dead horse and will not survive. Other, more popular scales, have the same problems. A friend, a major producer for brass parts here in Germany, told me that the annual sales brake down from 400000 USD to less than 8000 USD in the last 10-15 years. "S" is no longer a commercial interesting product for the mass production manufactors...
I dunno...
Back in the day, A.C. Gilbert was the only mass marketer of S Gauge trains. Everyone else was pretty much "cottage industries."
A.C. Gilbert shut it's doors in 1967. There were no new American Flyer trains (such as it was, a gondola, a box car, a tank car and a caboose) until 1979 by Lionel. American Models didn't hit the street until around 1982. SHS was originally a small cottage industry under a different name making kits of interesting quality before "helping" AM introduce some new products and finally offering their own products around 1989.
Even though they're hardly ever talked about compared to Lionel and MTH, sumptin's goin' on if American Models was recently able to build and move into a larger building.
S is more like a cat with 9 lives and it hasn't reached #9 yet.
Rusty
