One other observation about S (not a complaint) is that I checked Ebay and and both SHS and AM have only 25 auctions each on there. Of those 50 auctions only 3 of them are locomotives. Three diesels and no steam. Where do you guys buy S scale on the secondary market?
Last night I went to my friend Steve's house (corsair29 here on the forum) to see his layout and run trains. We all had a good time. Steve has a really nice 3 rail layout with all scale equipment. He has a bunch of locomotives many of which are weathered. The weathering really makes the details pop out and I was saying to myself could I achieve similar results with S scale? The first thought that comes to mind is I don't think so. I'm not saying I've made a decision. I did decide that I am going to wait until April York of next year to see what MTH has to say then. At that point I am going to start building a layout. I am not like most 2 railers who build a bunch of nice models at their work bench and don't get around to building a layout until they are well into the retirement years or never. I have been wanting a layout for 10 years now. I want to have the track done and trains running with a year or two after I start it.
I looked at an older Lionel catalog yesterday and if they only made their steam engines DCC compatible that would be a huge help because the engines are already 2 rail so there would be no machining costs to run in on my railroad. In the one catalog I looked at the only scale piece Lionel offered was a steam engine. It was the Challenger and not that bad of a price for $1K. Unfortunately, all of Lionel's other offerings looked like they were still using the old A.C. Gilbert tooling from '50s. Not my cup of tea.
One of the guys at Steve's last night told me that MTH did not buy the remaining inventory from SHS and that SHS only has a limited time to get rid of it so they may have some good prices at York on rolling stock. If yes, I plan on picking up a couple of boxcars.
Sorry to ramble on. Thanks again guys.
