$4,000 for a hundred car train.
I do remember in my "Pepperidge Farms" days when I thought certain prices were insane and complained an inappropriate amount about it.
So I certainly cannot criticize someone for not liking the prices that have been coming at us of late.
Having said that...
I wonder how many people ACTUALLY are going to buy 100 of these cars.
My gold standard for coal train length was Daryl Kruse and he often had train lengths numbering in the mid-30's that looked very realistic to me. I think one of his videos I counted out 36, but after some experimentation I decided that 32 was the "sweet spot" for what looked good versus having something that would be manageable for a home layout. (incidentally, I also noted that the next dropoff in overall look was at around 27 cars, which is what I would consider my absolute bare minimum for a modern unit train on a permanent home layout)
Is this level of detail (and subsequent price) needed on a car intended for unit train service? I trend toward *no*, but not overly so. I'll confess I like the cars to have more detail "when it makes sense." And I don't have that particular metric defined, aside from a vague construct inside my admittedly indecisive brain.
I thought the Atlas Coalveyor cars were a good value at around $14.95 MSRP back in mid-2002...20 years ago. They are appropriately detailed and designed to be pretty durable relative to the level of detail applied. Yet, NOW the MSRP is $32.95 for--from what I can tell--no change in the tooling. (anybody know if these have metal wheels now? Body mount couplers?) Just doesn't seem to have the same value to me. (fyi, inflation calculator pegs these to price out at $24.74 if you project that $14.95 out to now...this could be part of the problem...Atlas going all Bachmann on us.)
So, versus these $38.95 AutoFlood III's...well I think you can see where I'm going with this. If the delta is $6 for 20 year newer tooling with an enhanced level of detail? Granted I'm not comparing apples to apples here...the FVM RD-4 would probably be a more fair comparison, but since Atlas just announced a new run of Coalveyors it's what was on my mind, and I happened to have the price I paid for them in 2002 handy.
EDIT: I also wanted to add... I certainly concede that even 32 of these $40 cars ain't cheap....nice $1300 bar tab.
