With myself included in the count there are thirteen of us here that are coming up on the time when we will no longer be modeling. Too bad we can't take our trains with us. But then again there may be a model railroad club up there. My point being, why not enjoy what we have here and now. Yes prices are going up everyday. They have been since the advent of trading something for something else. I have more models, projects and other toys than I need. Sure I still acquire more but I have enough to keep me busy till the end. And until the time comes I will enjoy every model, every friend and every day to the fullest. It is a whole lot easier to change your own attitude than the price of a little piece of plastic and metal.
Almost everyone will agree this is a hobby...of which I am one of those. And a hobby is an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation. By its own definition a hobby shouldnt have to cost an arm and a leg and 2 pints of blood to enjoy! Just saying. *btw...I enjoy my trains (hobby)...everyday... ;-) .
It is difficult to contain prices when we do want more details and better models. There will always be those who will pay top $$ for a model they want and those who would rather wait and pick up a bargain but thats the beauty of this hobby. When I started N scale in 1996 I was paying up too $200 Australian for a KATO loco I am now paying at least half that due to the exchange rate. I was chatting to Craig Martyn last night and he was saying that is was difficult to keep the new hoppers under $20. Compare those cars to earlier models. I remember paying that kinda a money for cars with rapido couplers now they either come with accumte or microtrain. I have always been a firm beleiver of you get what you pay for. If you want better quality then I am prepared to pay a little more. In reallife I never go the cheapest quote. With Ebay, trainboard store etc there is more opportunity now for a bargain than there has ever been. There are also ways of recouping some money from the hobby. Have you thought about doing an article for a modelling magazine? You don't have to be an expert modeller to have an article published. I have had 4 articles published and the income I earned was enough to justify a years purchase of locomotives and rolingstock. It is always about enjoying the hobby and that means budgeting to what your lifestyle can afford. Great topic though
Well said Dave, our attitudes are the only thing we have full control over. So I'm with ya enjoy till I can't no more. And all the friends that come with this wonderful hobby.
Just off hand, after plastic prices and dollar devaluations, I would guess that the demand for RTR has driven the price up most. Those $6 MDC box cars were put together by us. Now, Athearn releases them as RTR at higher prices. Once you factor in the labor to assemble the cars in China (or wherever) adding ten detail parts rather than 6 isn't that big a deal, IMHO. Again, I think we have to be careful in assuming our personal attitudes towards the hobby are "typical." I would ask the LHS guys here to tell us what flies off the shelves the fastest and what lingers? RTR and detail probably sell fastest. At least, the mfgs must think so, since that is what they keep making by and large, no?
i just taped together a Walther's electric blast furnace. I paid $ 29.00 plus $5.00 to ship it from e-bay. The same kit is on sale for $62.98 from $89.98 http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3807 this is NOTHING more then a few flat sheets of ribbed plastic siding,some open girder roof trusses and a very basic furnace. I had to e-mail Walther's about the warped floor parts,(think egg shaped walls) My point is for almost $90.00 what did you really get???? same thing for locomotives are they really worth $150.00?? The sad thing is all the manufactures KNOW they have us by the short hairs and there is nothing we can do about it.. I know i don't have the technology to manufacture my own locomotives
Well, you answered your own question...if you pay it, then its worth $150. Of course, I don't know of anyone who pays $150 for a loco, even the newest Atlas offerings at near that price. Most pay about 2/3 to 3/4 of that, or $100 to $113. I don't know about you, but I did follow my own advice and buy a Trainman GP15 today! I also got some used Con Cor Bilevel commuter cars at a train show. They feel good in my hands and are satisfying to look at on my layout. So, yeah, most of what I bought is worth it.
For steam locomotives from Kato, which that price more closely represents, I think so. let's put this in perspective. A cheap mens haircut is 20 bucks - lasts about a month. A single tank of gasoline is about $30 for hybrids, $60 for SUVs - for the average commuter lasts about a week, maybe 2 A bus ticket 2 dollars - valid for 90 minutes. A plane ticket from San Francisco to Omaha - $204 - 4 hours. A train ticket from San Francisco to Omaha - $126 - 2 days. That Kato steam locomotive - 150 - lasts years and years. Ok, lets break this down really specific. Haircut - 60 cents/day Gas - ~$ 4-8.50/day Bus ticket - $32/day (if you were to ride 24 hours straight) Plane ticket - $1,224/day (if you were to fly 24 hours straight) Train ticket - $63/day That Kato Steam locomotive - ~4 cents per day (based on 10 years, but that kato will still last much longer if properly cared for)
I get amused sometimes in reading these "rants" about the price of new releases going up and up and up, as if the manufacturers WANT to charge more and tick everyone off. You've got a number of factors in play here. First - most of the generic common prototypes have been done over the last 40 years. Since it is cheaper from a design and tooling standpoint to make a new model than in the past, it is now feasible to make models of more road-specific and esoteric prototypes. However, more esoteric models means lower demand, and manufacturers can't afford to have money tied up in slow-moving inventory, so that leads to shorter runs. Fewer pieces per run lead to higher per-piece costs. But this allows for more prototypes to be tooled. That doesn't even take into account the increase of raw material costs and unfavorable exchange rates. This decade has seen more new models than ever before, and the rate isn't slowing down. This is beneficial for this reason: modelers can be particular and buy models specific to the region and era of their layouts. No one's arm is being twisted to buy everything that hits the market, and there still are lower-end models available such as the Trainman line that satisfies those who are watching their pennies. Since there still are sources for lower-priced models, this has the sound of a foot-stomping temper-tantrum because some new models wanted are at a price point higher than desired.
For me its not so much that the product price of say Atlas is going up, but how it only goes up for SOME manufacturers. For example, The Atlas Dash 8 that was announced this week. $140 list. Ouch. Yet Kato can still produce the SD70Ace, and sell it at $110 list. Now Atlas always brings out the argument that China labor is going up, but there is still no way that employees in China make anywhere near what they do in Japan. And it costs just as much to ship from Japan as China, if not more. So if Kato can do it, why not Atlas? Thats what bugs me. Another example would be the PanAm boxcars. Athearn makes them in HO (which will cost more in material) for $19 list. Microtrains does the same thing for $36 list. It seems some are just greedier than others!
While I do not support this unsubstantuated line of thinking. Comparing the Chinese manufactured Fox Valley Models FVM8021 Pan Am (MEC) FMC 5347 CU FT Single Door Boxcar (which was $16.95 MSRP) with the American made Micro-Trains Line 025 00 470 Pan Am Railway (MEC) 50' Rib Side Single Door Boxcar without Roofwalk (which was $35.95 MSRP) would have better illustrated the point. Though the following comment is not aimed at any particular individual and/or group, it is somewhat disconcerting to find that those who tend to spend the least, often complain the most. One rarely (if ever) hears from the majority of buyers who are quite satisfied with their purchases. Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln or P.T. Barnum (depending upon who you ask): "You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."
George, The reason that any caboose costs more is simply that the manufacture knows that they will never sell as many as a standard freight car. Most freight cars can be justified on any train, the caboose is very very road specific. Unless you are a caboose fanatic, it doesn't matter how many different roads it is released in, the average person is only going to buy 1 or 2 for the road they model. A box car per say could be run in 10 different roads in a release and a person might buy 3, 4 or more different schemes of the same car in multiple numbers from a production run. That being said, the new Athearn Bay window caboose has probably 5 times the parts that the old basic cabooses had. Each one of those parts needed to be researched and then a mold made for it. Then additional man hours are needed to assemble all those parts. It's not the cost of the plastic, it is the time in research, making the molds, and added assembly that you are paying for. Whether it is worth the price is up to the individual. Personally, it's still cheaper than kitbashing or scratching your own. *see example at the end of post. Micro Trains says the smallest run they will do is 300 cars. The cars from the "old days" (Lima, Atlas, Postage stamp, etc.) were run in batches of probably 20,000 or more of each road and they continued to produce them for years, unchanged. No extra work, no research, nothing but crank up the machines and spit out train cars. That methodology is long gone, except maybe for Bachmann and Model Power trainset cars, which still sell for $6 or so in our shop. Smaller batches with more road names means higher prices. I'm sure nobody wants to go back to the A1G days where you had 4 options for a 3 bay hopper, if it was not available in your road name, there was no hope unless you wanted to paint and decal. Now you can wait a few months to a year and your road will more than likely be released in the car you want. Here is my example mentioned above: I would gladly pay $30-35 a car for these cabooses to be produced. That car cost me at least $50 to build. ($700 if you count the Alps printer and supplies I bought to make the decals). The SP guys are so fortunate to have options. I have none at all. There is not a single correct caboose manufactured for B&O steam/transition era.
Tony- I agree! I also would pay that for a good quality B&O caboose! And as for the price difference between Atlas and Kato, I don't think you can take the fact that Kato has no middle man. They own their own manufacturing plant (unless I'm somehow mistaken). They ARE the manufacturer at the factory level and the importer level. Atlas is not. Thus Kato has always had a competitive advantage. Ron
It doesn't matter how cheap the labor is in China, (though I bet the factory owner lives well), everyone in the chain from raw materials to hobby shop shelf has to make a share of the profit. Kato doesn't have to share the profits with anyone so they don't need such a big mark up. You might say neither does MTL, but another factor is that they don't have the market that Kato does, Kato can sell their US models cheaper because of their bigger income from the Japanese market that spreads the cost out a bit. I don't know the exact figures, (if indeed anyones does, correct me if you know), but I recall reading somewhere that there are around 9,000,000 model railroaders in Japan compared to 500,000 in the US and most of the Japanese ones are N scale.
That's my beef, too. I'd like Frisco and Cotton Belt boxcars as well as others not so often seen. More Western Pacific, Illinois Central, Burlington, CNW. I'd like 30's through 60's rolling stock--shorter cars, and with roofwalks. An old tank car. What keeps coming out is ultra modern stuff.
Right you are. I was sad to miss out on GN GP-7's with the gold stripes, so I looked on ebay--and found GN GP-7's with the same color schemes that are currently being sold by Brooklyn Locomotive Works. On Ebay they're $89 plus goodness knows what shipping. Over at Brooklyn Loco Works, the same locos--sold by a reputable dealer--are 67.50. This is what I imagine is happening: guys looking to make easy money from home are buying up stock from guys like Pete at BLW, then selling it to unsuspecting dupes on Ebay at a high markup. And that, I believe, is the short story of why I lost out on buying a GN GP-7 with gold striping.
It always amazes me too, how quickly after they are released that things turn up second hand on Ebay, and it's usually the things that are in demand not the ones that are sitting around on the dealers shelves that turn up the quickest.
Chaya: Allow me to chime in with you. I model the 1940-52 steam era on my Rio Grande layout, and I'd give my eyeteeth to find a simple, steel, oxide brown Rio Grande boxcar. I can get wooden Rio Grandes all over the place (and thank you Accurail!), but the only steel PS Rio Grande boxcars I can find are either the silver "Cookie" Box or the Grande Gold and Silver two-tone boxcars, both of which look kinda/sorta 'weird' for my particular era. They might be perfect running behind some F-3's, but I don't RUN F-3's, LOL! I don't mind re-painting and decalling, mind you, but I'd sure like to find one that I could just build and slap behind one of my steamers. Tom
