What's Happening At Deluxe Innovations?

Pete Steinmetz Nov 16, 2014

  1. Pete Steinmetz

    Pete Steinmetz TrainBoard Member

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    I am selling a Deluxe Innovations Freight Car Box with 14 coal hoppers. I haven't seen these boxes available in years. I was researching these boxes on the Deluxe web site. I found a nice mention of them, but when I went to the in stock, announcements, and future reservations pages, I didn't find a listing. I also noted that the Reservation Order Page shows last updated 11/5/12.

    I have bought a lot of their products over the years. I have containers up the wazoo, plus 10 sets of various well cars, boxcars, covered hoppers, and other stuff. All are great products.

    They seem to have slowed down considerably in the last few years. While I am not buying much N Scale lately, I sure miss seeing the variety of containers they produced.

    I know Dave posts here occasionally.

    Is the slowdown some Chinese thing?

    I deal with Chinese in my day job and find some of their business practices to be very questionable. Hopefully Deluxe hasn't found this out the hard way.
     
  2. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Three and a half months since his last new product announcement here. It has been a while.
     
  3. kmcsjr

    kmcsjr TrainBoard Member

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    I just contacted Dave last week about the upcoming pow mia car. He got back to me within hours, with an April expectation.
     
  4. Jim Reising

    Jim Reising In Memoriam

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  5. daniel_leavitt2000

    daniel_leavitt2000 TrainBoard Member

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    Dave has had a run of very bad luck. I am not sure we will ever see the old containers and road-railers again.
     
  6. Ottergoose

    Ottergoose TrainBoard Member

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    Con-Cor is flooding the market with cheap containers in desirable schemes too - apples and oranges product-wise, I know, but, can't be good news for the DI container line.
     
  7. Pete Steinmetz

    Pete Steinmetz TrainBoard Member

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    Never had good luck with the Con Cor containers. Stacked two of them in a DI well car. Went under a bridge, on an N Trak module, that was NMRA regulation height. Containers hit the underside of the bridge and not only came off and derailed the train, but broke the top of the bridge. Turned out they were slightly taller than the DI containers. When stacked, they were even taller. Got rid of all of them.
     
  8. Jim Reising

    Jim Reising In Memoriam

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    Yabbut, Guys -

    If the C-C are the only game in town (other than Kato with their limited schemes)...I will confess to buying a bunch of them in anticipation of the DI Maxis - I'm not gonna run 'em empty. I think they'll look just fine.
     
  9. Glenn Poole

    Glenn Poole TrainBoard Member

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    I'm stocking up already.
     
  10. mu26aeh

    mu26aeh TrainBoard Member

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    I don't run container cars, but if it's containers you want, check out DigCom Designs. You buy a PDF file, and you can print as many containers you want on paper cardstock. 53' trailers too !
     
  11. Dave Ferrari

    Dave Ferrari TrainBoard Member

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    Hello everyone,

    I am chiming in here, a friend let me know about this thread. I had to recover my password after changing browsers and didn't post the November product announcements here but will later.

    First, I'll address Pete's comments in the opening post. I am working on getting the boxes back in stock, the FreightPak is supposed to be ready the end of December and the PassengerPak in January. These look like they will slip yet again, and believe me it's as frustrating for me as it is for you. It will not include runs of cars in the boxes at this point but we'll work on that too. As for the coal gondolas, I'm a bit bummed that InterMountain is now selling the ex-Hubert's/LBF cars as their Value Line. But we will repair that tooling and get the cars out again next year. The Reservation Order Form has been replace by the Project Status Update Sheet ( http://deluxetrains.com/downloads/ProjectStatusSheet.pdf ) which is much simpler for me to update. I just posted one that had been handed out at Trainfest. Hit refresh if you don't see one dated 11/5/2014. The bulk of the slow down is a "China thing" or the effects of it on our operations. Things are improving in the product flow from China.

    Dan Leavitt is right, we've had a whole lot of bad luck. The Whippany location being flooded right after China - the old factory - stopped sending us product hurt too. Our 53' trailer and some of the container tooling is still not in our control yet but we do have half of the containers coming out of Pennsylvania.

    I don't like to bad mouth other manufacturers but do be careful of your bridge and tunnel clearances no matter whose containers you double-stack. As for DigCom, we sell a running gear set (item #991863) for their kits.
     
  12. Jim Reising

    Jim Reising In Memoriam

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    Thanks, Dave!

    It's always good when we get the information first hand.

    I think your luck is about to improve....
     

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