Jack Burgess writes:

"While I appreciate all of the new freight cars, both plastic and resin, all
of these "riches" (as I mentioned before) may have reduced our hobby to a
"ready to run" hobby. After all, there is very little that you can't now
purchase ready to run....engines, DCC systems, freight cars, structures,
track, etc. It seems that MR especially has embraced this idea...."


Actually, while I think Jack is correct about much that he said, he has a small but interesting conflict in this part of his comments. "Resin". As Jack well knows "resin" is not ready to run. I don't doubt that it is true that people wish to purchase ready to run but one cannot purchase ready to run resin cars...at least not yet. Part of the reason for buying ready to run stuff is, as Jack alludes to, it's easy to do AND it's probably the only way some of us are going to acquire the huge fleets of cars we seem to require. Today there are many, many frt cars not available in plastic so we are forced to go the resin route if we want some of these gems. For that matter, there are still large numbers of frt cars simply not available...in any form. Anyhow, the point is, we seem to see very different frt car acquisitions by the same people...ready to run plastic and "ready to build" resin cars....kits.

Mike Brock