>>10608498His video is mostly nostalgiafagging, but he brings up good points. Train sets that are just "Engine, cars, an oval of track, and power" are the bare essentials, but has little to no play value on its own. Not to say that it needs to go full Tyco with operating accessories and buildings, but they can definitely approve on what's out right now. Going through the available train sets on Trainworld at the moment the only stand-out ones are
>Digital Commander (2 engines + a switch + a basic DCC controller)>The Overland Limited (Big engine + high amount of cars for a set)>Empire Builder (Basically the same thing but N scale)>Village Street Car Set (It's a trolley set, so it's different from the rest)Everything else is just
>Engine>2-4 coaches/freight cars>Circle/Oval of track>Power supply (In most cases)I think the most thought-out starter sets come from Marklin since while they do have sets that fall into the above generalization, they also have a number of sets with more track varieties like passing sidings or spurs. Another point they have is that they're all designed to be expanded on with a variety of track expansion packs (C1-C5). Kato and LGB also have similar expansion packs too, but Marklin is the only one that I know includes those in their sets occasionally.
Adding even a single switch completely transforms the whole dynamic of a starter set. The only reason why they don't include them in them these days is because adding 1 or 2 switches is going to drive up the price of that set by like $30-40 depending on what other track you'd need (More straights/curves/buffers).
