Up to now I've contributed nothing to this discusion, prefering to sit back & let others have their say. My own personal preferance would to be to go down the road of a good quaulity rtr model - that is to say to the same standard of MM's locos & Cravens coaches. I've nothing against kits, but if one does want a rake of x,y or z, then I feel that life is too short to spend it building kit after kit if there is no need to. Having said that, given the choice of a poor rtr offering or a good kit, I'd go for the kit every time, assuming my skills were up to the job.
On the gauge issue, I'd much prefer to see stock built so that it can easily be converted to 21mm & I don't buy the fact that the cost will go through the roof if it is. If MM can manage to build his locos in such a way as to allow easy convertion, than I can't see why it can't be achieved with rigid & bogied stock also. At least with bogied stock if OO bogies are used, they can easily be changed but it does mean that the vehicle body is to the correct width. If OO scale rigid vehicles are manufactured, where is the width compromise going to occur & will it look 'funny' when the wagon is coupled next to a loco?
Yes, it would be nice if rigid wagons could be provided with 21mm axles, with the wheels slid on to allow running straight out of the box on OO track & I can well believe that any far eastern manufacturer would come up with reasons as to why their production lines couldn't easly produce / accommodate the longer axles, but how about comming at this issue from another angle. Produce the wagon chassis to the correct width but on the inside of the axle boxes have a boss incorporated in to the moldings so as to allow the us of standard OO length axles? Surely an option such as this wouldn't increase costs, but with a few minutes use of a scalpull, each wagon could easily be well on the way to convertion to 21mm. I'm sure some will say that it will look funny running a wide vehicle on 'narrow' gauge track, but everyone seems to accept it with MM's rtr locos.
I fully understand in these tight financial times that people are fully aware of cost, one only has to look on the internet to see how even some of the recent 071s are still hanging around, compared to say a few years back when the 141s hit the shelves, but does everyone have to have rakes & rakes of every type of wagon / coach / loco from the word go? What happened to building a collection / layout up over a number of years?
Anyway, for what they are worth, there are my thoughts on the subject