The reality is the O Scale (and Gauge) market is shrinking, and fast. The 3rd Rail E7s may have been 1500 units just a couple of years ago but the FP7s are 750 units and the proposed FTs are only 500 units and he doesn't even have half the reservations needed to move forward. The number of GGD passenger trains and cars is likewise shrinking fast. The numbers for the '38 20th Century were higher 5 years ago than the '48 20th Century and twice the number for the current '38 Broadway. And the reminder of the Columbian cars are being made (I think about 30 of each car) at the same time to make the minimum numbers. And those minimum numbers are shrinking too with requisite cost increases.
There were only 160 Overland SD70ACes made.
The reason is simple, the cost to manufacture these reduced numbers is multiples of the US inflation rate multiplied by the 25% annual wage increase the Chinese government mandates. So yes, the cost and thus the prices will increase about 15% per year until the market disappears. It is not Lionel, etc being greedy. The reason Scott wrote about moving manufacturing to the Philippines is to get away from those increases. But the more manufacturing that moves there the more the pressure for those wages to start increasing like China.
The good enough threshold for 3-rail is generally low and Lionel and MTH have pretty much saturated the 3-rail SD70ACe market at all the lower (sub $1K) price points. The same is true for ES44s.
You wouldn't get more than about 100 reservations for an accurate $1K plastic SD70ACe. Probably more like 60-70. And the die cast suggestion would not make any significant change. There are folks like me who might be interested in a plastic version who have zero interest in a die cast version.
