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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by orsonroy What I see are more and more kits being produced, with only a few of the same manufacturers cranking out the bulk of the RTR stuff (Athearn, RC, and IM). I can now get well in excess of 40 laser cut wood caboose kits, all railroad specific, from two manufacturers and half a dozen distributors. You couldn't come CLOSE to that sort of variety in the "golden age of kits". Westerfield is a resin manufacturer. Probably the biggest one in the hobby with well over 150 car kits in their product line. With a bigger freight car product line than Athearn and Roundhouse combined, and the best resin car sales in the hobby, they're by no means "the small guys". [/quote] And you think that Westerfield, ECW, F&C, even Titchy are main-stream and readily available everywhere? No - I don't think so. If you can get them at your LHSs in Chicago then you are very fortunate. For the rest of us it takes someone with a bit of knowledge and determination to track them down - if I want a kit from one of these manufacturers (and I have quite a few) I usually have to go for a good search on the 'Net before I can find someone selling them. Even the US specialists here in the UK don't carry most of these lines, and half the big internet stores don't either. For the beginner who walks into a LHS off the High Street and wants to buy a couple of inexpensive kits (and for that I don't necessarily mean "shake the box" ) to see if he really wants to get into the hobby there simply isn't the choice available. All power to Branchlines for sticking with good quality kits at a competitive price which are widely available - but their bucking the trend. If you want to see how this will end up look at the British OO guage market. There is virtually no mass produced kits any more, everything is either limited availability craftsman kits or mass produced RTR. This is not good for the long term future of the hobby.
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