In the HO brass world, there ARE new engines being produced.now and then.? Division Point is an example.? However, the target market would seem to pretty clearly be collectors.? For example, their recent Southern Pacific cab forwards sold for about $4,000.? If you want a brand-new HO scale Northern Pacific 0-6-0, you are in luck.? You can pre-order one for late 2024 delivery.? The price is a mere $1,895.00.? But if you don't have to have the L-5, you can get W&R L-6, 7, 9, or 10 from the fairly recent, but now gone, W&R Enterprises for about $1200 or an old PFM L-9 for about $200.? So even in that little niche, it doesn't matter much if anything new comes out.
But unlike S, there is a vast and varied stock of used HO Brass always on the market.? Everything from the 1950's to 1970's rather good and fairly durable PFM, Westside, et. al. to the later more delicately detailed and fragile ones.? It's really not very important that there be "new" HO brass offerings.? They are scarcely needed.? Who needs yet another Big Boy offering - except a collector and that is really the market now.? It does seem like there are a lot of new offerings in the HO passenger car area, however.
Charles E. "Chuck" Kinzer
On Saturday, June 22, 2024 at 10:19:59 AM PDT, Rich Gajnak <rustytraque@...> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 22, 2024 at 07:11 AM, Brian Jackson wrote:
Rich, I take your point, but let's say someone wants to buy a new brass steam locomotive in HO these days? There are none to be found new.
You'd have to take that up with the surviving HO brass builders.
It's certainly that's not going to be an incentive for those HO folks to switch to S, is it?? After all, S has such a readily available w-i-d-e selection of brass to choose from.? Last I looked P-B-L is the last S brass importer standing and their products are 99.99% narrow gauge.?
