Well, if you do reduce the number of roadnames carried, offering undecorated units (complete or at least shells) would likely pick up the slack. Just my 1.1 cents (after taxes)...
Hi Rob, thanks for the explantion, sh...things happen sometimes and I undersstand your 2 and a half man show and this is not your main business. Also having vendors offshore doesn't make things easier. Sometimes it's worth having a 3rd pair of eyese for review. I guess there is time enough to do so, you are not commited to your customers to relaese your products in a specified time.
Hello Rob, ...I have to agree with you on the re-numbering...and it is much easier than correcting the fan distance. ...and I assume it still is much appreciated that AZL does more road numbers of the same products!
Rob(A), I know I've mentioned this in the past, but with you comment about MOQ's have you considered offering decorated, unnumbered units? It would seem that one could come up with more sales of a given road offering a "number it youself" option than just offering specific road numbers. At least from my experience, I've yet to be able to remove a factory applied road number without damaging the rest of the unit's paint job. And as you said yourself, there is a lot of talent in the Z community to repaint and adding a roadnumber is a lot easier than repainting. Mark
my 2 cents I was not going to comment on the D&RGW GP30s, but since I am the large letters small letters culprit, here it goes: When we first ordered the GP30 run, our MOQ was considerably smaller. As we were forced to up the numbers we added two more road numbers for all railroads. It did not really occur to me that not all D&RGW GP30s were given the large lettering and thus I made the mistake (since I did not go back to check photos of the roster). It is the kind of mistakes that happen when things go back and forth. If we do a 2nd D&RGW run, this mistake will not happen again! At least we created some collector items! Undecorated units. They will show up in the future, but initially we will keep the production low.
Hi, In the past we produced up to 500 locomotives per roadname. We have more flexibility now and try to tailor each run for an immediate sellout. Since we lock into production quantities as much as 18 months ahead of delivery, our input has not always been correct and we end up short of products. Also, there are always some rejects that will be subtracted from the ordered number and we keep a few for ourselves as well. It boils down to between 150 and 300 per roadname. That number can usually be divided by 4 to get the quantity for the specific roadnumber.
Joe, You need to contact Rob K. at Ztrack. They are the exclusive distributors of AZL for possible pre-pay. Good to see another person in NC with Z. The Mikados should be coming out sometime in the near future from AZL.
We have had some folks asking about the pulling power of the GP30s. I have not had a chance to test the pulling power, but I did hear back from a very happy owner. Here is what he found - Rob The AZL Wisconsin Central GP30 locomotive sure runs super! She has great pulling power. These GP30's must have some sort of new traction tires on them? No need for Bull Frog Snot on this little work horse. Here's what she can comfortably pull: 36 AZL and MTL cars. The train is 9 ft. long. Or 1,980 ft. in Z scale. That is 6 1/2 football fields long!
I was pulling 43 cars with 3 GP30's, and had a loco breakaway, and with 1 loco, the train was still going when we noticed it half way around our modular layout. Granted the train was already moving when we the 2 other locos walked away, but they were only 4 feet in front of the rest of the train half way around our Z-Bend Track layout, and we have lots of "Bend" in layout! I am very impressed with the GP30's pulling power... It's a mule, nay, water buffalo!
Re. The GP30 Graham Jones brought the first one to arrive in the U.K along to Hull Model rail Show at the weekend. This model is intended for Tony Waitzman's collection and is in Rio Grande livery. Both Graham and myself had been concerned with the recent correspondence about the running of the Geep and we were pleased to see this one run like a watch straight from the box. Bear in mind this one had travelled from the Far East to the USA and then across the Atlantic to England. I normally give my AZL locos a good running turn before I assess the performance but the GP30 was flawless from the outset video of it trundling around 'Cuyahoga' can be seen at http://youtu.be/q7WuNFDTKvo The only reservation I have is the rather 'Blue' white light behind the numberboards Whilst on the subject of AZL Graham brough my runner pack of NOKL Gondolas that I had ordered, Does anybody else think these seem to be very heavy models? I was surprised by the weight when I got them out of the box KEV
Thanks for showing the video Kev. It shows to be a good running engine. I can't wait to get mine Grande GP30 (should be somewhere in the mail).... although I don't have such a great layout to run it on alike yours. The blue light could maybe changed by coloring the LED orange somehow.
Got my , Grande GP30 as well. Unfortunately not the expected 3014, but I am pleased with it anyway. Eventually it will get an other road number and some additions like the GP35. It runs great directly out of the box and even better after a couple of laps on a test oval.
I just received my D&RGW #3003 sample. Good running caracteristics but lacking low speed performance. Guess it will need to be broken in....:ru-wink: Dom
Speaking of the GP30s, did some of you guys already attempt to remove their truck mounted couplers? Indeed one of my goals is to do the same than I'm doing with my MTL Geeps (already 3 units done): set a MTL coupler box underneath the front part of the shell (and maybe aft as well) using superglue. But I didn't manage to see how truck mounted couplers are set on the GP30: is this a removable box such as with the SD70s, or is coupler box one piece with its matching truck, like on MTL Geeps (in that cas I'll have some cutting work to perform)? Dom
Truck mounted couplers. We decided not to have a removable coupler box on the GP30. If someone wants to install the front plate with the dummy coupler, the coupler box needs to be carefully cut off from the truck.