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[quote user="nycstlrr"]I am sure my reply will just be blown right over as they usually are. Here are my 2 cents. My kids were raised with Jerry Joe`s steam on the Ohio Central. I was raised on steam when I was a kid. All of my kids ran on many trips on a Saturday out of Sugarcreek. What better thing is there (then) in Ohio? Run over to Amish county, get some cheese, meat and sodas. And take a trip behind the 1551 or 1293. Kids today no longer have this chance. Jerry quit doing this well over a decade ago. Heck, they even got to ride behind the GTW 6325 when he had it running. Ok, enough of that, it is just whipping a dead horse, as they will never return to Sugarcreek like that. A few years back, we took my son in law and oldest daughter to CVSR to ride behind the 765. My son in law had never seen a steam engine in his life. He is now hooked. That is part of the problem, todays generation has no idea what a steam engine is. I am just thankful NS lets the 765 use their tracks to Bellevue, then the 765 takes over on the Wheeling. If Walthers quits making steam, it is not our fault! Us Geezer`s know what steam is and we are kicking the bucket everyday. Todays generation and the last few, grew up with Diesel. So, they will model what they see and grew up with, I guess. I grew up in the Diesel generation but I rode steam from coast to coast. Todays middle class, hell, they can`t afford vacations. Both parents have to work just to feed their kids.[/quote] I really wish people your generation would stop making assumptions/generalizations about my generation.  Im 29.  I model the transition era on my home layout (now awaiting re-assembly).  I dont typically bring more than one or two steam locomotives to their mechanisms tending to be more susceptable to damage than a diesel. Edit (I dont bring much steam to train shows, I typically run diesel locomotives, due to the before mentioned tendency to be fragile).    My mother was a school teacher in Indiana and my father a television repair man.   Combined income was less than $60,000 a year.  Yet some how I turned out a transition era modeler.  May have been something to do with the N&W 1218 video tape I watched as a child several hundred times, also the Water Level Route video equally hundreds of times watched as well.  [quote user="nycstlrr"]So, I guess the demise of steam is economics. Families just can`t afford to run to Wyoming, or Pennsylvania, Indiana, to spend well over a 100 bucks to ride behind these engines that are still running, and the kids have no clue about them. [/quote] Hmm or how about the thousands of people who came out to see N&W 611?  Or the thousands of children who follow model steam locomotive around my club layout at train shows. This exact point was brought up tonight (these kinds of internet posts) at my clubs Wednesday dinner get to gether prior to our evening work session.  There's a guy in my club who is 25 who also models transition era, and he's been seeing this same type of stuff on MRH.  How about the guy on here that is building his first layout running Thomas trains?  He's 16...  It may be a kids show, but its still a thing.  My 12 year old cousin absoutely loves steam trains.  [quote user="nycstlrr"]Plus they all have phones and every other electronic devise in front of their faces now. Off the soap box, like it did any good.[/quote] Yep so what you are saying is that no boy ever got distracted from model railroading by cars and girls?  The how has just changed.  Also some of them are watching train videos... As for the good it did, well you got me on my soap box. And now that Im done with my rant.  If I had to make guesses/assumptions, reason that Walthers didnt run steam this year is that the market is saturated with second hand 0-8-0s and 0-6-0s.  Also the dies wore out for the P2K wheelsets (my last package of them had major defects).  Which would indicate that maybe the dies where getting old on the originals.  I have seen no less than 6 Heritage Proto 2k steam switchers at almost every show I have been to over the last 3 years.  So many that I have been able to be nitpicky about the ones I select.  For the very reason nycstlrr mentioned, older generations are dying (natural order of things) and their collections appear on the second hand market.  I have had no trouble fleshing out my roster with 0-6-0s, 0-8-0s, 2-8-0s, 2-8-2s and so on.  Give it time.  If they see a demand they will likely run them again, but probably under the new "preorder everything" scheme that has begun to predominate the market.  And they will probably re-tool.  Its nothing to get excited about.   Im pretty sure this is not the first year a manufacturer has not listed as steam locomotive in their product line.
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