How about a loco which has F-N-R, and horn/whistle ONLY! No other noise, no people in the cab, plain couplers. Would that bring the prices down?
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Mebbe 5 bucks.
Rusty
Context? G
I think their "lite" version is the Penn Flyer. It has standard couplers and lesser quality sound. That being said, I picked up an entire rtr penn flyer LC set from Menards a couple months back for $150. For the price, its great. It came with some descent rolling stock and a bit of fastrack.
Dominic Mazoch posted:How about a loco which has F-N-R, and horn/whistle ONLY! No other noise, no people in the cab, plain couplers. Would that bring the prices down?
This is why I've chosen to stay with TMCC CAB1 . The Legacy system is way overkill for what I need. I've only recently switched to CAB1L, because it has some features, the boxes for operating switches, accessories and such. If I didn't want that, I'd stick with my CAB1. I am going to try the Bluetooth card that another manufacturer is bringing to market (and discussed in other threads).
What switch and accessory capability does the BASE1L/CAB1L have over the BASE1/CAB1? I thought those were the same.
I think LionChief is already about as "light" and simple as it gets. There would be no real cost saving to making a loco with a simpler control system is my guess. You can get inexpensive LionChief sets most of the year for not much more than $100-150, which is not much more than HO or N starter sets.
It may cost them more in redesign cost to remove those features? I am sure once they get the design down the boards cost extremely little to make in quantity. Just look at some of the prices of small, ready made electronic boards from the Asian suppliers on ebay. They are practically giving some of these away. They must still be making a profit or they would soon be gone. I don't see how they do it, but they seem to continue offering these items with a new one thrown in every now and then. I agree with Landsteiner above, I think the LC sets are probably already about as slimmed down and as low as they can be in their pricing.
Speaking only for the LionChief line, not the Plus line, The electronics required to operate the thing cost, in consumer quantities, less than $5.00 more than they would with a conventional electronic e-unit and no sound. That cost is the same on an engine that has two sounds or 50. The thing here is, you already have a microprocessor on board that can do so much more than LC does. Sure, you could redesign the system to use an obsolete microprocessor to limit the functions, but the fun thing is, the new chips with more features actually cost less.
I guess the point here is, the LionChief engines are priced as low as possible already. You won't drop the cost by taking away things that don't cost anything (pennies) in the first place.
JGL
Menard's does not have a locomotive. Yet........................... If they do, all bets, to me, are off!
Dominic Mazoch posted:Menard's does not have a locomotive. Yet........................... If they do, all bets, to me, are off!
Menards does not make their own locomotives...yet. They do, however sell several LIonChief starter sets. I've seen the Penn Flyer, and the John Deere sets, but I'm sure they have others.
If Menards ever did decide to go into the engine production business, I'd love to sit down with the guys on their R&D team and talk about things that can be done almost as cheap as free, to make a competitive electronics package.
JGL
