Brushless motors getting cheaper..will they ever replace the "can"?

Here's a good chart to show the torque curves.  I don't see any evidence that brushless motors have limited low speed torque, quite the opposite.  A decent EDN article on BLDC motors as well.  You have to limit the current for most BLDC motors at low speeds to avoid excessive heating, but lack of torque certainly doesn't seem to be an issue.

The only places I used BLDC motors in my work were in instrumentation, so torque wasn't really a primary consideration, so I never had to explore that end of the spectrum in detail before.

Brushless DC Motors – Part I: Construction and Operating Principles

I shouldn't be surprised if the next generation of toy train electronics does use the new brush-less d.c. motor. It will give the toy train companies another excuse to rerun the molds and models again and at a higher price!

Well, that would be a good reason, no doubt about it.  Greed Is Good, just ask Gordon Gekko.

I was at Lowes and noticed the set on prominent display was brushless. I tried them out and sure enough, there is no tell tale sparking at the armature.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobal...Soft-Case/1000061159

They felt strong and ran smooth as a simple test in my hands anyways.

I just find it interesting where they're showing up. Whether or not they end up inside toy trains, only time will tell. I do appreciate the posts so far here stating what else is available. I had never considered where else steppers motors might be used. I really don't know much of anything about those.

 Moving towards battery or stored on board power, Bluetooth or similar wireless control, etc., it should be very interesting to all here where we're heading. Of course there's always good reasons to just enjoy what we have right now.

Just had another failure of a Railking steamer motor, so maybe brushless isn't such a bad idea.

I may have missed it. but can you run ERR cruise control with a BLDC motor?  ERR literature says that the cruise relies on back EMF for control.  Would we have to go back to tac strips?

Jan

The current ERR product clearly would not work with BLDC motors, it requires a totally different motor drive.