@eddie g posted:Be careful, Lionel may be making all those tinplate trains that MTH made.
Don't we wish. Lionel doesn't get it. They don't understand tinplate. There are unwritten rules to tinplate.
1) Color Counts and not prototypical colors, the more beautiful the better.
2)Toy like appearance is a selling point.
3) There are some purest that want original open frame motors and limited to no sounds, these people are a loud minority of customers buying tinplate today. Most of them won't buy the product anyway since they are not originals. Most people buying modern tinplate are operators. A friend of mine that collects European Tinplate, his collection and layout were in a TM video a few years back. "Most of my friends would cringe seeing you operate your trains instead of just displaying them."
4)Tinplate Operators generally like sounds and smoke. This actually adds to the toy like appearance. Mike Wolf was not in favor in offering tinplate with sounds and command but one of his employees talked him into trying it and the sales took off.
Let's look at Lionel's last tinplate offerings.
On the O-Scale side they offered a Flying Yankee and a small steamer set. The flying Yankee set was 100% traditional and so was the small steam set. The steam set had no smoke and had flat paint (see rule #1). Stores still have these for sale.
The standard gauge offerings. The Hiawatha and the Commodore Vanderbilt. Both were fine looking sets however;
*They were built to look like scale trains (see rule #2)
*The Vanderbilt was painted a prototypical drab dark gray color like the real locomotive. (See Rule #1)
*They had open frame motors without any cruise control; mine had one speed-fast. It always seemed as it was going to run right off my elevated track.
If Lionel would have offered the Vanderbilts in different colors (like red, blue streak), they would have sold out rather than being forced to blow them out at a loss.
Scott Smith
