Over the past week the hot topic on the S-Scalelist at Yahoo has been the American Flyer Y3. Me being a dedicated S Scaler and not knowing one thing about American Flyer, I decided that I would look into this wonder of wonders. I checked out the nice photos that Rusty posted and it is indeed a very nice looking model! Nothing like that ugly, over sized and out of scale Challenger they did a few years ago. I then tried to find a price or dealer on the internet. I found no mention of it even at the LIONEL SITE. I have also notice no one has mention what this thing sells for on any of the forums. It that because it is so expensive?
Another Rusty
Hi Rusty,
Welcome to the Forum.
Retail for the the Y3 is $999.99 in the 2012 Flyer catalog. Charles Ro lists them for $839. I got mine from my LSH who knocks 10% off and eats the city and state taxes.
I think you're confusing the Challenger with the Big Boy that was derived from K-Line tooling. The Big Boy was somewhere around 1:60 proportion.
The Challenger was built with all new tooling, is to 1:64 proportion, and is a very good model in itself.
The Y3 is even better.
Lionel really seems to be making a commitment to S. It started very slowly in 2003 with the Mikado's. They've expanded beyond "traditional" Flyer now. They're doing things like scale wheels and including Kadee mounting brackets on diesels, DCC compatibility on the SD70's, something they haven't done for the O gaugers.
Rusty
