Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Lionel license the AF name and tooling to MTH. They already do it with Tinplate and that has been a success from what I understand.
Trouble is, MTH hasn't exactly been a ball o' fire in S, either. I knew it would be slow rebooting the Showcase Line, but I didn't figure it to be this slow.
As the story goes, there won't be anything new in MTH S until the former SHS has all been rereleased. Plus the F3 delivery dates have slipped what, 3-4 times now (Now Sept. 2015) and apparently MTH doesn't even know (or won't say) when the next catalog will be.
The tinplate deal with MTH works for Lionel because MTH already had its own tooling and was already producing Lionel reproductions (minus the badging,) whereas Lionel would have to tool up to compete for literally identical tin trains in a small market.
Rusty
I know what you are saying Rich, but I still think at the end of the day they could do a better job simply because it seems to me that Lionel doesn't really want the business at all. I wonder if they had an out if they would take it?
A few folks criticized me a year or two ago when I said that my source told me that Lionel had no new S scale products on the board. If you add that to what Bill just posted from Matt Ashba that they are going to wait to see how the starter set grade Berks sell before they even think about another engine... You don't have to be a genius to figure out that the only AF scale products we will see are likely going to be repaints of existing tooling.
How hard would it be to put Legacy into the Pacifics and Mikados? Jon Z. said that he has smaller boards now that will work. The rumor I heard was that they might not have the tooling anymore? Not sure about that, but still...
I promise I will stop beating this dead horse, but it still frustrates me that Lionel busted out of the gates and has now basically fallen flat. I think it is fair to say that this management team and the previous team view AF differently.
