Coming announcement next week in new Lionel catalog is the companies reentry into HO. They will be offering two locomotives with very good quality sound, a UP Veranda and a UP Challenger. This is true if the advance talk of the catalog on the O gauge boards is correct. The stuff is overpriced in my opinion at a reported MSRP of $599 per unit.
$599! Do you see what the new Union Pacific trademark licensing will do to the price of UP locomotives!
Seriously I hope they have a lot of space to store all the locomotives they are not going to sell at that price. Maybe they do not know the HO market. Or they are as good or better than the brass equivelant. Or perhaps the retail is $599 and their dealers will be selling them for $199. Oh wait it's Lionel they will not allow that kind of activity if you still want to be an "authorized" Lionel dealer. I wonder if their dealers still need to worry about that nonsense.
Salinas
They can set the Lionel Challenger boxes next to the Athearn Challenger and Riverossi Challenger boxes which will be less than half the price. Have I missed any [H0] Challengers?
CTucker NY
Didnt Roco or somebody also announce a Challenger, at the same time as Athearn? Bill
Doesn't Bowser still offer a Challenger?
CTucker NY
Gee, Lionel is finally realizing they can only sell so much junk to so many old baby boomers before they go broke? Why a Challenger?
?So they can cut up the unsold stock and remarket them as 0-6-0's? !Twice the product at half the parts investment! Steve "MrRathburne" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com... : Gee, Lionel is finally realizing they can only sell so much junk to so : many old baby boomers before they go broke? Why a Challenger? : : "Christian" wrote in message news:... : > > > UP Veranda and a UP Challenger.
No, the big mail order houses for O gauge Lionel sell everything at 20 to 30% off list
You all missed the point that these engines are going to have excellent sound, I must admit that the sound in Lionel's O gauge stuff is really good, and maybe even smoke. I figure street price will be about $420
I haven't heard any of the new sound systems (Phoenix, Soundtraxx, LGB, Broadway Limited, etc.) that I would consider excellent. I've never heard Lionel's so maybe it is. But "smoke",!? that is a sure sign of a toy train type of thing. I haven't seen any smoke that bellows properly like a prototype. What passes for excellent in the toy train market is going to have a much harder sell in the scale world. Of course, maybe there are enough HO toy-train people to make it profitable for them. Surely they have done the marketing research. I know at least one real person who falls in this category.
All that Heritage Dealer stuff is history now. Just check an issue of Classic Toy Trains. All dealer deep discount the Lionel items. Nobody sells at MSRP.
The Soundtraxx system has really good sound in my opinion. I can also attest that Lionel sound is very very good. Lionel and MTH trains have smoke now that billows from small fans in the smoke units that force the smoke out. Of course, all this results in steam engines in O gauge that cost over $1,000 even after 20-30% discounts. I have recently left O and gone to N scale so I really am not going to be interested in the new Lionel HO but I think it will be a quality unit that misses the market in HO. I really think Lionel should stick to their own speciality, O gauge trains. They are producing very nice scale locomotives whose only problem is that it uses three rail track. The company has entered into HO twice before, in the late 1950s and in the 1980s (I think) and failed both times. I think this will be another disaster.
I don't understand Lionel. USA trains can sell a two motored No. one scale diesel with good detail and incredible pulling power, all insulated for outside use, for about $200.00, while Lionel wants about $400.00 for the same unit, in indoor O scale.
The real problem with O scale is that it is marketed as collectable stuff, which it is not. Its a nice scale, but the economics suck
You are right about that. I have been selling off my O Lionel stuff as I am moving into N scale and you can't get anywhere near what you paid for it, even if it is still new in the box. O gauge is way overpriced to start with and the secondary market just bears that to be true.
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