Prrhorseshoecurve -
I imagine that, if the O-gauge market is still deemed vibrant enough, there will eventually be new tooling produced for "us". (Same thoughts on Lionel TMCC-to-Legacy.) After all, all this tooling was new once, and more can be as easily (in some cases, more easily) made than those 20-year-old dies and the like.
It will take this for me to become once again a "new" buyer, as a pattern of behavior (there can be exceptions). I find PS-1 items - great models - at low prices and put ERR boards in them. Sometimes I skip the sound and go with command/cruise only.
I do understand MTH/Lionel milking the electronics cow as long as they can for that part of their fan base, and that portion is relatively easy to please cheaply, but for the rest of us, until those new things (mostly steamers in my case) start showing up as new hardware (for example, L&N 2-8-4 - a well-know loco, never done in 3RO except as a paint job on the wrong loco), I'll not order much, if anything, from anybody's catalogue.
