Re: Lionel 2006 V2 Catalog!

["Ira Schneider" <ira_schneider@iname.com>]

I am rather disappointed in Lionel's new offerings.

TMCC-2 looks like Lionel is playing catch-up with MTH.  They haven't really added any new features
over DCS, are not compatible with DCS (no surprise there!), and doubled the price of the
CAB-2 and charger.  They also made the new CAB-2 rechargeable, which means we would
have to charge the remote control before we used it.  We would also have to provide power for
the charging bases.

It also appears that the TMCC-2 system doesn't read information from the engines.  It sounds
like you have to take the identification chip which comes with the new TMCC-2 engines and
download the information into the TMCC-2 system.  It isn't clear whether the CAB-2 retains
the information (which means you would have to load the info into EVERY CAB-2) or if the
command base retains the information.  It also doesn't say what happens if the command base
is powered off for a long time (like ours would be).

At first glance, it doesn't look like TMCC-2 would be much use to the club.

I am also disappointed (but again, not surprised) at the K-Line products Lionel included in their
product line.  The initial offering only includes a couple of engines and some rolling stock.  They
didn't include either the shadow-rail track system (which we could certainly use) or the road system
(which might have been an interesting product).  They also didn't include any of the licensed
rolling stock which K-Line announced just before Lionel acquired them.

I guess this is just business as usual.


Ira