That's an interesting question. From what I understand their current production 'O' gauge product can run 2-rail or 3-rail at the flip of a switch. This saves them the trouble of having to build 2 separate SKUs and do a crapshoot as to how many of each the market actually wants.
Don's approach to including scale wheels with the SHS product accomplished the same thing. I would think that continuing this would make more sense and even be cheaper than building separate SKUs, as us S-gaugers seem to be more than happy to do our conversions in the field.
One nice SHS tradition that I suspect won't continue is the Christmas cars. These required a fair amount of attention to execute and I don't know if MTH will do these or focus on expanding the line. It would be nice if they would produce the 2010 fishbelly Christmas car that Sanda Kan committed to produce before reneging.
Nick C.
As Don Thompson pointed out on Yahoo, MTH shows the fishbelly hopper in their press release.
Also, MTH is known for doing all sorts of "festive" cars in O and HO.
In O, MTH offers a choice of scale or hirail wheels with 2 different SKU's on SOME products. I think the switch just ties the insulated wheels together and the third rail pick-up needs to be removed.
I agree it would be preferable to just include scale wheels like SHS had done.
I'm sure we'll find out more as time rolls on.
Rusty
