I am loking through the newest Lionel catalouge and I noticed hw small the af section is. There is only 4 pages and only 3 steam locomotive offerings. I am noticing the number of american flyers in the catalouges seams to be constantly declining. Any ideas why?
Just a guess, but I would say they probably are not selling. Unless Lionel gets a good amount of preorders they either do not make the product at all or else make very few. They judge production by the orders they receive. Have you ordered any AF from the prior catalogs?
Im into O gauge even though form time to time I like to tinker around with american flyer but I never bought any newer stuff. Most of my af experience has been with post war stuff.
I think Lionel has taken a different approach to American Flyer. They have not catered to the operators as much. Limited supplies helps keep the price up on certain pieces, so maybe they are targeting the collector? But if you look at the stats, there are 1/10 the people running S scale/gauge than O gauge so the market may just not be there. I was and still am an avid American Flyer collector and operator (I like the size proportion, two rails, and simple choo choo sounds). But then I recently gave up and put everything on the shelf when I saw some of the new Lionel TMCC stuff coming out, the availability is 10 fold, its the same price or even less, has all the bells and whistles, more manufactures, used pieces are half the price as S. It has scale like proportions with the new releases and I noticed that there are more AC hi rail operators. S gauge has a very different market, DC scale operator, and AC set collector. Saddly the AC set collector and operator has diminished. Due to age or just plane lack of availability of new products and features in AC with command control? Not sure, but I noticed if I wanted to plug and play quickly a nice AC train layout, for price, products, availability, and quantity to choose from, O gauge was the way to go. So now my S guage AC hi rail layout is sitting collecting dust and all the trains are on shelves…can’t afford a Lionel American Flyer TMCC loco at 650 dollars (with only 3 to choose from)… not when I can buy many a nice Lionel/K line/ MTH steam locomotive for 450.00 or less.