lionel and Star Wars

A heartfelt welcome to you as a new member to this band of misfits!

If Lionel follows their usual marketing methods the first Star Wars will likely be in the less expensive but nice ready to run sets.   This should be right in what I anticipate is your budget.  That said however, most of the offerings are likely to be less ambitious than your expectations as this is after all a model train company not a virtual reality company.

The Star War offerings will likely be limited to traditional model railroad offerings such as flat cars, hoppers, refrigerated cars, box cars, dare I say static.  That is not to say there is not some forward thinking such as Wonder Woman's Invisible plane flat car with nothing on the flat car but a shadow of the plane.

Brilliant.

Be hopeful but be patient. 

Unless Lionel is ready to go into tooling which thinks outside the conventional railroad components box  or repurposing tooling as they have done in the past for other branded themes success may be short lived outside the novelty of initial ownership.  The better approach IMO to a sustainable assault on fans of any licensing initiative would be to partner with a toy manufacturer with a parallel license to integrate the train items into the greater toy offerings.

The goal would be to create a diorama environment in which the train is a part but not the sole player in a fantasy scheme.

That model might actually satisfy the interests of not only the Comi Con crowd but other licensing/branding initiatives that Lionel might undertake.

If on the other hand Lionel plans to simply place images of Star Wars characters on engines, box cars etc., and put a Wookie figure chasing Darth Vader around a bunch of boxes in a gondola, the sound I hear is not sizzle, but fizzle unfortunately. 

Good point.  But IMO this train would look better in the old silent movie 'Metropolis' which has some fantastic futuristic visuals.  I am all for innovation and building a broader younger hobby base for model trains.  So no Debbie Downer here.

What I would like to see is a different approach for Lionel to take with this franchise; say a virtual reality headset to integrate the train into a more robust and dramatic environment.  Now that would be something.

The target Comi Con prospect is likely not to have anything approaching even a modest permanent layout.  Right off the bat you  are likely looking at something that either stays in the box to flip or a someday down the line opportunity, goes on a display shelf, or goes in circles with the starter set track; then goes back in the box.

Plenty of pitfalls marketing wise, but also opportunities for Lionel to do something dramatic.  

UPDATE
i learned from a comic con recording that there will be atleast 14 SKUs in the 2025 big book which is already more than star treks total of 10 pieces