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Subject: 
Re: The Future of Trains
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.lego
Date: 
Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:57:52 GMT
Viewed: 
21667 times
  
In lugnet.announce, Steve Witt wrote:
I'm posting this on behalf of Richard Stollery, head of LEGO Community
Development:

<snip>
The LEGO Group has considered the future of the 9v at length, and has come to
the conclusion that there is not sufficient demand for the product line to be
profitable and competitive.


One evening, way back in 1991, I was pushing a baby stroller thru Toys R Us.  My
son, Graham, 2 years old, in the stroller.  We went over to the toy train area -
because I was looking forward to the day in the futrure when we could play with
trains together.  We turned down the ailse and there it was - a plexiglass
display with the Lego 9V Metroliner and the yellow Central Station.  We did not
make any purchases that day...

Here we are 16 years later  - my son in college - (taking an Electrical
engineering class where they are building a Lego robot) - our house filled with
Lego trains and city buildings.  Bags and bags of spare Lego bricks.

For some reason - something possesses me to log into Lugnet on Oct 1 - just a
couple hours after the announcement.  I delayed posting until today.

It has been quite an adventure.  With this little stroll down memory lane, I am
thinking of the past and the future.  I am certain of several things:

-the 9V trainheads will continue on.  I am already planning a 9V motor rebuild
service.  DON'T throw away any dead motors!  We will continue to build and
innovate.

-TLG will get some things right and somethings wrong.  They always fluctuate
between really cool sets and really bogus ones.  Just when we thought the world
had completely gone Town Jr - they came out with really good train and town
buldings.

So after 16 years TLG is ready to go a different way,  I can live with that.  I
will continue to buy sets with good parts and skip the others.

What will the 2009 train system look like?  Not sure - I hope it will allow the
easy creation of Moc engines.

What will we tell the always astonished public at train shows?  Not much
different than we are now. "most of this stuff, you have to get online..."  now
we add that TLG is not currently producing any of it and something new will come
in 2009.

What about 2008?  While I am not too worried about the long term future, I am a
little bummed by the short term.  They could throw us a bone with a new rolling
stock set.  Maybe a Rolling Stock Hoby Train set?


Summary?  I have some amount of faith in TLG - but an immense amount of faith in
the AFOL community - we will keep it rolling for a LONG time.


-Kirk Houser
North East Texas Lego Train Club



Message is in Reply To:
  The Future of Trains
 
I'm posting this on behalf of Richard Stollery, head of LEGO Community Development: LEGO 9V Train Communication Billund, Oct. 1st ’07 Dear all, Many of you are aware of the on-going discussions on the 9V train system. We would like to thank you all (...) (17 years ago, 1-Oct-07, to lugnet.announce) !! 

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