New Items for 2023

[Marquette]

Your last sentence is the key here. They buy it because there's no other option. But if they DIDN'T buy it and all the feedback was "no freelance", then maybe prototypical models would be made. This is not just for MAV but all customers. Hence my previous comment: customers don't demand prototype.

I think more the company would say there's no market for that prototype and still not bother to make a new tooling.

Also I think in smaller markets there's still that mindset of "gotta take what we can get" that's left over from the old days.

[ConducTTor]

That's because people have no self-control :) Buying something you don't like/want is pure desperation. Although honestly, a lot of people also don't know that their model is not prototypically correct or they know but don't care. I would guess the ones that know and care are less than 50%.

[TiTan downunder]

news to me was that Piko have an American office in San Diego which could explain the Whitcomb 65 tonner.

For this year in HO they are doing the SP Krauss Maffei. From memory this loco hasn't been done since the Rivarossi models of the 70's.

There could hope for some TT American one day

https://www.piko-america.com/collection ... o-ho-scale

Ian

[Marquette]

Piko do seem to be willing to go for models with somewhat less market appeal, see also their Hungarian V43 electric in HO - only ever ran in Hungary.

[MacG]

... For this year in HO they are doing the SP Krauss Maffei. From memory this loco hasn't been done since the Rivarossi models of the 70's. ...

There is or was still the brass model from Overland Models Inc. (OMI), including the ML-4000 locomotives with the walkaround.

[j p]

Piko do seem to be willing to go for models with somewhat less market appeal, see also their Hungarian V43 electric in HO - only ever ran in Hungary.

I would not generalize.
Here is a picture of two V43s in Sturovo/Parkany in Slovakia.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hhhumber/ ... otostream/

and another picture of V43 in Bratislava/Poszony in Slovakia, this one even with Czech passenger cars (CD).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/42309484@N03/4315133961

[Marquette]

Piko do seem to be willing to go for models with somewhat less market appeal, see also their Hungarian V43 electric in HO - only ever ran in Hungary.

I would not generalize.
Here is a picture of two V43s in Sturovo/Parkany in Slovakia.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hhhumber/ ... otostream/

and another picture of V43 in Bratislava/Poszony in Slovakia, this one even with Czech passenger cars (CD).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/42309484@N03/4315133961

Well cross-border ops notwithstanding: Trains running between Budapest and points west via Rajka have Hungarian power pulling it to Bratislava/Pozsony (one of those trains uses exclusively CD stock), and to Sturovo/Párkány even BDVmot (EMUs) operate from Bp-Nyugati since the 80s afaik. These aren't movements comparable to how deeply ÖBB locomotives will go into Germany...

[Marquette]

AFAIK ŽSR power runs deeper into Hungary than vice-versa.