Well, since you went there, I prefer my wife to either of those two.
V:
Hey, sometimes seriously ugly can be interesting, intrinsically. [;)]
And, lest I inadvertently offended someone, the Brit locos were kinda neat, in an ungainly sorta way!
Les
A plastic D&RGW K-27 in 1:22.5 scale
Let’s see, some of the biggest sellers and / or the biggest profit makers, were:
The big Hauler
The Stainz
The Mighty Mo
The Egg-liner.
Were you the guy who was begging for an Egg-liner?
Of course all those people who bought them wanted their next loco to be a Mikado, a GG1, a Big Boy or a Genesis AMD103, etc.
Everyone said, “I’d Love to see…”, “I’d buy a…” , “I want a…”, “Everyone will want a…”, “I’d buy two…”
Companies spent millions on development and tooling.
One percent of the hobby had curves big enough, half of those thought they looked silly on smaller curves. The other half couldn’t afford them.
LGB made three out of four of those. Where is LGB now?
If I owned one of those companies, I’d FIRE any employee that so much as LOOKED at a forum pole.
So, the question was, "NEW ENGINES YOU WANT TO SEE MADE IN G SCALE… "
That would depend on what Target, Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us would want for starter sets. It would also depend on what movie or TV show featured trains.
I don’t care as long as MILLIONS OF THEM CAN BE SOLD.
Of course, to sell to the modern buyer, that means the engine would probably be a diesel.
Since the companies know the consuming public is fickle, and another TV show or movie next year will demand another new loco, I’d like to see a modular powered axle. Just like the traction motor under most diesels.
Each manufacture would make the traction motor according to the price point they are designing to, IE:
- Bachmann could put a 50 cent motor and a 3 cent plastic gear in their traction motor and use just one traction lotor per loco. The other axles would be dummies.
- USAT could put a 5 amp motor on each axle and a split shaft (that splits) on all their axles.
- LGB Marklin could put two brush-less DC
Wow, a voice of reason in the pettifog of greed!
Bob, the most needed standard you didn’t mention was couplers; but I really like your idea for standardized, interchangeable parts!
Bob:
I’m not trying to be disagreeable, because I think your idea is great. But it won’t work. Here’s a few reasons:
Let’s pick a brand name out of the air, one aimed for the low-end market. (Think, kids, and engines being used as handlaunched missiles…) So, they’d have to be rugged. And low end stuff barely approximates a proto one. Let’s name this fictional brand um … ‘Echo’.
Now, Honorable Chinese Train and Cannon fdy gets an order for X million Echo Hard Chargers. Those crafty honorable Chinese engineers sit down and figure out the minumum mechanical requirements. They do a remarkably great job for what they have to design down to. The production lines roll. Honored Chinese Plant owner is Happy Camper, smiles down on his engineers.
Along about s/n 500,000 in the production run,Mr. Kung Foo, of the Honorable Chinese Gear and Cannnon Factory, experiences a production overrun/cancellation, whatever, and realizes he has an Honorable warehouse full of gearsets that are now worthless to him. He sends his Highest Honored engineer to the Honored Chinese Echo maker, saying, “Oh, Sir, though my poor product is unworthy of thy unsurpassable Hard Charger Train, we have a great number of them which we would be grateful if you would accept, and only 2 for a penny. This will save you fully 50.1% on manufacturing costs after the mere rearrangement of four holes, or perchance five.”
Honored Echo manufacturer runs the numbers, and indeed, the man is correct! 2% of .5 mil is nice, especially since he can coerce his engineering staff to work freetime on redesign, exactly as the Running Dog Americans do. (After all, he attended Harvard Business School, too).
Profits go up. Now let us pick at random another, but better-quality train. Let’s call it uh… Bachmann. Built better, or advertised to be. Certainly looks better. They are unfortunate in that their engineering team got the flu, perhaps, and a cer
I’m loving these well reasoned and excellently written discussions! Pure Art!