Friday, June 30, 2006

The Poll Is Up

I thought this "polling thing" to send a message to standard gauge manufacturers was a good idea. So I have developed the poll based on emails I have received as well as feedback on the Yahoo Groups and the Tinplate Forums.

What I plan to do is leave the poll open a couple of weeks and get as many people as I can to reply to it. I'll take it and send it off to manufacturers. If they want to ignore a market and revenue, that's their perogative. I am tired of "hoping" that manufacturers read my webpage or the Groups Pages or the forums. Hope isn't a bad thing (now I sound like the Shawshank Redemption) but it doesn't always pay the bills. I don't like people that set around and bellyache without offering up some solutions so this is my start at an offering.

"What are you talking about Marc? What's the problem you are solving?" The problem is that the O gauge market seems to get a newly tooled set of engines from every manufacture at least once every twelve months. New rolling stock, new buildings, new signals. Std gauge seems to get an periodic remake of a Lionel Classic Period peice or Ives peice once or twice a year. While I think we should be thankful for that fact it doesn't exactly float for innovation.

So I have compiled a list from "All the things I'd like MTH to produce" as well as the O gauge forums to the best of my limited ability. Hopefully the list will never really be finished (because everyone's imagination is really unlimited). It's a first crack at starting to expand the standard gauge catalog beyond the stock items. There has been so much fantastic standard gauge built since World War II ended, we need to give it recognition as well as new items that should be but have never been produced.

Go vote! Use the link above. And get others in the TCA, TTOS and LCCA to vote as well!


Marc

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Marc,

You have posed the question too narrowly. Why just MTH? Why not other manufacturers (e.g., Lionel)?

The answer as to why there were few preorders for the MTH-cataloged articulated 400E is (IMHO) that it was ugly. The drive wheels were too small relative the overall size of the engine, for starters.

Enjoy reading your blog very much! Keep it up.

BB