We may be overlooking one thing here, mail order. If your store is in the eastern part of say the USA and you advertise in the west you best have western road names available. Now reverse that. You own a store in the west your advertising reaches the east coast. You best have eastern roads on hand. Up until recently you could order products from out of state and not have to pay sales tax. That's changing and in some states they (who ever they is) requires you to either pay their state tax or yours. How they keep track of all of this I don't know. It would be an auditor's night mare to juggle all the bookkeeping. What you don't think I've taken advantage of that? Just a thought.
Monthly-phone-service-charges have NOTHING to do with the expense of using some existing device for DBTC! I will repeat. Bluetooth (or DBTC) is NOT limited to phones! I have a dedicated 10” tablet (~$100) that I will be using (It will also be capable of displaying switch control panels). Some JMRI users are buying (~$40) phones and setting them up for dedicated use. Bob
Somebody here mentioned “World’s Greatest Hobby” and the shows they sponsor. Remember that 45,240 sq mi region that has no hobby shops*? Well it doesn’t have any MR Shows either. Imagine Ohio without any hobby shops or train shows. Yes, I am aware that the geographical area I am referring too has a population density just this side of the Moon but still; is MR or any hobby, only for the urban/suburban populations? It sure seems that way from where I sit and that can’t be good. Like others I remember when K-Mart and Woolworths had hobby departments that amounted to hobby shops. Those days are gone. Back then kids in rural regions/small town America were exposed to model trains and rocketry and they could actually purchase the stuff locally. These sections of the store were often overseen by somebody that actually knew his @$$ from his elbow with regards to these hobbies and could offer help and advice to their customers. Now it is not uncommon to go into a dedicated hobby/train shop and find people working there that know absolutely nothing about what they are selling and don’t get me started on the typical Big Box store employee. When you go into a Lowes or Wal-Mart and ask for Simple Green and you get a “Dear in the headlights” look. . . *I am not counting “Hobby Lobby” as a hobby shop. Maybe in other regions of the country but here they are mostly arts and crafts supplies and home decorating items.
Late to this party, but will offer some random thoughts of dubious quality..... I have always believed MR to have a sort of innate rate of participation that won't change over time. It seems we all got in via an older relative (dad, uncle, grandpa, quirky neighbor) who took us train watching or had trains, and got us some, like Lionel. It just sticks with some, maybe based on an estimate of 600K model railroaders in a population of 300M of 0.2% or less. If anything, it may decrease slightly, because of more options moving forward and more immigrants who might have less a family history in trains. But, go to WGH or any train show, and the inherent interest in moving trains among young boys is still there in droves. As sort of an aside, I am not sure it is white only. Here in DFW we have black participants. Have never done the math to see if it is proportional to our middle class(who can afford trains) race ratios, and it may not be. however, there is certainly a long history of blacks working on the railroad, and maybe some of that passes down in the traditional way. Maybe as mfg, I would offer some kind of youth coupon to get a starter set in their hands via Mom and Dad, or what have you. Even if you break even, it is low cost marketing for the next gen. Most recreational industries are fighting the same increased competition, and lazer focus on the baby boomers in prime spending years, to max out profit now, BTW. I like Doug's idea of more tech. Just as theme parks need some new ride every year to bring back dormant customers, I think MR needs its next big thing, and I am not sure decoders under the hood qualify, as the user needs to feel and see its benefit. So, probably some neat controller and/or function, as has been discussed. I also like the Rod Stewart idea, but also wonder if instead of malls, clubs set up at Hooters or some such to get even more attention for, shall we say, unrelated reasons. It is certainly the male demographic......we do need some sort of out of box thinking on the hopes that once exposed (again) to trains, the young males rekindle some of their childhood interest. As to the pre-order gripes, I do think they can figure out how much they will sell, mostly from recent orders. I recall John Armstrong writing in the old blue box days that 80% of a model will sell in the first month. Yes, the old 80-20 rule. If you make 5000K locos, you might sell 4K and be stuck holding 1,000 for those who want the luxury of buying on their schedule. I think pre-order makes even more sense for limited run products, like the B and O wagon top caboose. Calculate the cost of someone holding on to those 1000 locos, and you have your answer as to why it isn't done. And, it makes sense in general, at least for the more experienced modelers that we are here. While some may miss stuff (not the end of the world) I would bet 99% here are both on top of products, and representative of experienced model railroaders. Not sure how it affects newbs and why it is mentioned here......
Unfortunately, we have now drifted into a more theoretical world. Especially when start assuming the masses are all on an even plane, and can immediately buy whenever the market coughs up anything new. Sadly, we are not even close to being all on an equal footing. Even with pre-announcements, life gets in the way for a lot more of us than most are capable of comprehending. Shoes simply are not one size fits all.
You have guys who run DC You have guys who run DCC You have guys who run DCC/Sound You have guys who run Bluetooth There is room in this hobby for EVERYONE to run what they want. All a manufacturer has to do to keep EVERYONE happy is... Build locomotives that are DC but DCC READY. Make it a 'plug and play' board. Make room for a speaker. Make a removeable weight so they can put a speaker in if its what they want. I'll choose what plug and play decoder I WANT...dont put in what YOU think I want ! Commision the decoder manufactures to make a sound decoder that will be a true 'plug and play'. EVERYONE wins !!!! NOBODY is wrong !! Run what ya brung !! It keeps the hobby healthy ;-)
The big problem with “plug and play” is that there has to be viable and somewhat fair specifications and specification-process. I do not consider the DCC specifications/recomendations to be fair as far as new users are concerned. The DCC standards initially appear to be “plug and play” to many new users. This may be souring a number of new users on the hobby. I wonder if there is any real user input into the current standards process in the hobby. Bob
As I have said before, there were no real engineers consulted in the development of DCC, otherwise they would have realized the C for control requires feedback from the device under control. As it stands NMRA gave us a half control system since there is no provision for feedback. More to the point, technology surely can make DCC more plug and play. There is no reason that the 6 pin plug can only control two lighting functions, it is shortsighted on the design of the board. I can easily see that you place the locomotive with the decoder on the programming track and just type in the first page in JMRI DecoderPro and have the improved application read the type of locomotive and automatically program the decoder for the user with real world settings for the locomotive. This is just one way technology can make it easier for all users. And it can be done fairly easily if the developers of JMRI decided to do it. With this type of automation it would be easier to program locomotives, add lighting effects and possibly marry motion and sound decoders easier. Lest not forget that better materials science can be used to come up with a better chassis alloy for both weight and conductivity. Perhaps all the manufacturers could work together on this since it benefits all. Just the tip of the iceberg......
Just saw some new promotional material from the golf industry which might be applicable to growing the hobby, more so than improving DCC. These posters stress the outside benefits of golf as in "Golfers Do More Business Deals", "The family that plays together, stays together," "Golfers Live Longer," Golfers Make Lifelong Friends," and "Golfers Make New Friends." 2. 4. and 5 apply to model railroading. 1 and 3 probably do not, but updating the true slogans of "MR is fun" and the "World's Greatest Hobby" could substitute, along with some others, like "Fun without leaving the house". "Join Special Ops - the non digital mensa challenge" or something similar. They are all a part of a new marketing tool kit put together by the industry. I think there have been a few efforts at it (including WGH, which has devolved to 4 train shows a year, but once had ambassadors, flyers, etc.) in the MR industry. I know its just hard to keep a sustained marketing program going, because the mfgs put in money, but don't see instant results, which of course, you never do from an awareness marketing campaign. MR may have some problems in not being as big a money biz at golf or others, so funding will always be a problem, unless they can get, say, Atlas to automatically send a penny of every rolling stock purchase to the campaign, so the money dribbles away unnoticeably, rather than writing some big check. (So the first net effect will be locos priced at $130, not $129.99......)
We have to remember that even the largest company involved in the Model Railroad hobby is by global standards a pretty small business, dollars and cents wise. Much of the research and development for DCC wasn’t even performed by any of the locomotive manufactures, they just “Installed” what was handed to them by those that did do the R&D. I doubt very much that Atlas or Kato or Intermountain has anybody on their payroll that has the necessary education/background to perform that kind of R&D. Think about it, Computer software, digital electronics, chip architecture, these are just some of the elements that went into the development of DCC and they would all be needed if DCC was to be “Re-designed” to some new and improved standards. And then there is question of how we define the health of this hobby. If in 1960 Model Trains had 1,000,000 participants each spending an average of $100 then the hobby was a $100,000,000 business and that is in 1960’s dollars. If today we have 500,000 participants each spending an average of $500 then the hobby is a $250,000,000 business. Under these circumstance is the hobby better-off today than in 1960? Undoubtedly the today’s products are by and large vastly superior to what was being sold back in 1960 but we have only half the human numbers and that $500 probably doesn’t purchase nearly as much product as that $100 did back in 1960. Something else that needs to be taken into account; what constituted a “Model Railroader” back in 1960 as opposed to today? Having two/thirds of that one million “Hobbyist” owning nothing more than a 4x8 sheet of plywood with an oval of track nailed to it hardly constitutes a healthy state of affairs. Meanwhile having 90% of that half million figure actually building something we can all agree is a “Model Railroad” makes today’s state of the hobby something far better than what it was in 1960. Now without question I’ve got my figures wrong; I basically pulled them. . .Well, let’s not go there shall we, but the point I’m trying to make is there are more ways to look at the state of the hobby than merely dollars and cents or even number of participants. Or, I could be full of (&@!
I would say that most of the current hobby DCC manufacturers don’t do R&D because they have a lock on DCC sales and that DBTC does not look anywhere near as lucrative to them. But one manufacturer has apparently broken ranks with the aid of an apparent startup that apparently has done the R&D for DBTC. There is also a least one other DCC manufacturer that is doing the R&D for DBTC. Bob
In reading the latest Zimo decoder documentation, Zimo DCC decoders have the ability to not only auto calculate speed tables but they also can interface with signaling systems and automatically slow down and stop if Automatic Block Control (ABC) is in play. So features in DCC are getting more and more sophisticated. I am not sure to what extent DBTC can equal or surpass all the functionality in DCC.
I agree with alot of what has been said above. Throwing my two cents worth in as CEO, I think I would put out more road numbers on the rolling stock than what is currently put out. I have about 120 various cars and quite a few double road numbers. Just saying.
BlueTrain also includes the ability to control accessories. This requires a Bluetooth train controller that can control the accessories (like JMRI). There are also plans to develop an inexpensive Bluetooth-accessory-controller. BlueTrain can also run a sequence of internally stored commands with a single command from the train controller. All the interfaces are (and will be) open-source, and all the software and firmware that I am developing is (and will be) open-source. Just waiting for a price quote on the first set of HO locomotive boards. Bob
Okay I just came into a boatload of money and I decided to invest some of it into a startup business in the area of recreational hobbies. One of those hobbies is model railroading. Because of changes to the living environment I have decided to produce mostly N scale products and the long ignored Z scale area, because living spaces are becoming smaller. My company will not have a board of directors or have any stockholders to answer to. My goalswill be to produce a product that is relatively low cost to be affordable to new folks starting out and extremely reliable in operation. I want my locomotives to be able to operate on 9.75 and 11 inch radiuses reliably reflecting the smaller apartment sized layouts. I want to have as many detail options that can be made available to allow a modeler to model the particulars of the class of power for a specific road name. Those detail options would be included on a separate sprue with the undecorated kits or as a separate ordered part. I would want to explore other metal options that would give good weight and pulling power to those locos and the possible use of metal bodies where feasible. And I would want to offer those locos in two basic formats. One would be a chassis milled to accept a decoder of the modeler’s choice with a simple plug and play for hooking up a decoder. The other would be a good quality dual mode decoder equipped loco to allow the modeler the option of running on DC or DCC right out of the box. I will not outsource any production outside of this country and all my new hires as the business grows will have enough benefits and salary to make retention of valued employeesa non-issue. I will also look at what products are not currently available and gear my production toward those models and road names. Also there will be no pre-announcements. Nothing will be released until the product is ready to be shipped with each locomotive having been run prior to being boxed to winnow out any production quality lapses.Once that is done the product will be announced and orders taken to determine how much more production is needed to fill the demand. New products will be announced when they are ready to come to market in scale specific magazines and internet web sites. Warranty and customer service will be number one but the prime goal will be to have no lemons leave the factory. Folks with a unsatisfactory product can return it to the dealer who then will replace it and return the product back to the factory where upon we will ship a new loco the replace the dealer's inventory. Enough excess shells and mechanism parts will be produced to have a supply of parts available to dealers for repairs of dropped and damaged locos. But all locos that have running issues we would want back at the factory to examine for production issues. In short I would want to avoid the coming in 2014 now 2015, or maybe 2016 thing. Keeping it is country and in house gets away from those issues. And certainly having all the returns coming back to the factory keeps a tight grip on quality and certainly testing each one before releasing is yet another move in that direction that keeps lemons off the market and establishes a good customer relations experience.
John, Basically, what you said here is how I started my Electronic Communications company so many years ago. It has a great track record for employee retention(over 92%), and everything they make or assembled is 100% made in the wonderful United States, just not in California!
