Get out of the rut. See how much more there is to have fun with.
I think that anyone in S scale knows about limitations and the scarcity of choices. It does not seem helpful to encourage those and any interested parties in the S scale forum to quit. That's a personal choice. Like Rusty, I stay in S because of people I have met and the challenge of finding or building what works for me. That is how I find my fun.
The fact is that there are not enough of us S scale/high-rail modelers to make the market attractive enough to build the variety we see in HO or even O scale. When Lionel cancelled the first Legacy Berkshire, I noted that it the price was too good to be true. It was; it was too low at $500 to make production worth it for Lionel. Now they raised the list price to $600, the same as that for their diesel locomotives. The Challenger and the Y-3 had list prices of $1,000 when the SD70ACe was $480--more than twice as much. Now a Berkshire with Legacy features (excellent sound for a wide variety of effects; ability to run AC, TMCC, Legacy, DC, and DCC; directional lighting that includes a light on the tender; marker lights; a cab light; and a high level of detailing) is available for $100 more than a simple DC Pacific with a single headlight. That's exciting!
Rather than complain about a U36C/U33C jumping to $600, I'm happy to see a Legacy steam locomotive at the same price. The cylindrical hoppers will have new, more prototypical trucks. Lionel even promised some time ago to offer an SD40(-2)--a long time after a much earlier promise that was believable enough to make the cover of the S Gaugian. So despite so many personnel changes at Lionel and despite the small market S scale offers, my thinking is that Lionel does listen and eventually does get to the back burner.
There are two additional consolations about S scale. The first is that the choices are so limited that I can avoid becoming the Imelda Marcos of models trains, with so many impulse purchases that I have closets of unopened boxes of rolling stock instead of shoes. The second is that decent models of autos and trucks are far more plentiful at a third or fourth the price of HO versions. When Lionel offers a real auto-rack car, I'll have a place to store some of them.
