Kato Empire Builder Cars

Why should Kato care about what another manufacturer is doing? Competition makes the market... not intimidation. Doesn’t make sense Kato 'backing off' from any competitor.

May I suggest the following reference links regarding n-scale passenger consists (with particular emphasis on Great Northern):

http://www.trainweb.org/fredatsf/eb47.htm

http://www.trainweb.org/fredatsf/eb51.htm

http://www.trainweb.org/fredatsf/eb55.htm

Intermountain units I agree with you… though they do appear a bit “high water” between truck and carbody.

My experience with PCM is different; and I am aware you are affiliated with PCM. I purchased two PCM EMD Great Northern E7’s; and I’m not overly impressed with them. 1). They have a “coffee grinder” sound when running. And one unit had to be returned because gear binding occurred in the rear truck when the unit was tested in reverse.:thumbs_down: 2). The Great Northern Omaha Orange is “too” orange… though I suppose one might argue “That’s the way the prototype came from the factory.”:thumbs_down: 3). PCM did/does provide excellent service… when the defective unit I had was returned to PCM they replaced it with a new one. Most Excellent. :thumbs_up: :thumbs_up:

PCM may be "improving" as they continue, but I'll wait awhile longer before purchasing any addtional PCM product.

 

The Builder is certainly very easy on the eyes. I have started to put one together...slowly. Does anyone have a source for a full dome car? The consist looks incomplete without it. Thanks!

 

Why should a manufacturer care what a competitor does?
Because the Model Railroad Market is small enough to begin with and those who intentionally go head to head with a competitor better have a superior product or one that is in a totally different price/quality category.....otherwise you're dividing up an already small number of potential sales.
MR estimates the size of the Hobby at 500,000. Divide that up by scale (MR says N is 14%) and you might have 70,000 N Scalers. Further divide that up by Railroad Interest, Era, Prototype Preferences, Current Budget (other items released at the same time??) and a whole raft of other limiting factors and you might have only a couple of hundred of assured sales for a particular item. Divide that up between two manufacturers and you have one or both with unsold product.
What most Model Railroaders don't "get" is that this isn't like the electronics or home appliance market.....where competition works in a huge marketplace when almost identical products appear.
In the Model Railroad Industry it is better for manufacturers to bring out complementary products..... unsold product may result in distress sale prices in the short run but it will result in fewer manufacturers and less product in the long run.
There are some items that can stand direct competition because of their popularity in the prototype (many roadnames and paint jobs) so that manufacturers can release them without really being in direct competition as long as the roadnames and roadnumbers don't repeat within a short release timeframe.
Tooling for a passenger train is an iffy proposition because now we all expect accurate carbodies....and there are very few prototypes that span more than one railroad much less train on a railroad (CZ, Super Chief, Broadway, etc..) So duplicating a train would be very costly for all of us..... a disaster for the manufacturers and ultimately for us.
Charlie Vlk
Railroad Model Resources

 

Yep... Bachmann 85 ft. ATSF style full dome car and brass sides from Brass Car Sides: http://www.brasscarsides.com/ :shade:

 

I disagree. Yes, product quality and price do have market impact. But market size should NOT matter... Competition still makes the market; that's what makes the stock market work. That's the way all competitive business evironments work.

Ironically in nature it's known as "Survival of the fittest."

 

When the vast majority of the cost of the product lies in the tooling costs rather than the raw materials, as is the case with model railroad product, market size is the be-all and the end-all of whether or not a product can be produced at a profit. If the market is split, the tooling cost for each manufacturer is effectively doubled, so everybody loses. Model railroad manufacturing has far more resemblance to the "pink sheets" than the New York Stock Exchange! :cat:

 

Thanks for the Brass Car Sides site. May have to order a few of those! That car will look great in the consist.

If anyone has access to Classic Trains mag, they had a special edition in early '03 call DreamTrains. Pages 40-41 have a great picture of the full dome Glacier View. Looks sharp.

Any idea of how many full domes ran in a typical consist? And did they run in the same consist as the short domes?

Great info on this Board for N scalers...

 

Only one full length dome ran per consist and usually between a sleeper and the observation car. GN referred to their first dome cars as "Great Domes" .. which left them in a bit of a quandry what to call the full length dome when it came on the scene...:shout0pn: :hmm4er: :yes9rq:

 

My take on the Kato cars is this: They may be painted up generic shells but the street price is $70 for a four car set. That works out to $18.00 per car. I don't know how "correct" the Intermountain and Walthers cars are but the street price is around $30.00 a car. I haven't seen them in person but they appear better detailed in the websites(and more fragile).

Besides being gorgeous in their own right, the Kato cars have metal wheelsets and the rolling qualities are superior. They include electrical contacts on both sides of all four axles which means 8 wheel pickup should you decide to illuminate them. The Kato cars also include interiors. To me, they are an excellent value.

Kato is close enough to prototypical for a lot of folks maybe but not for everyone. That's where companies like Intermountain come in.. At a price. But then the Kato mid production SD-40-2's look better detailed to me than Intermountain tunnel motors.

Kato strikes me as a more of a plug and play company making affordable, reliable, rugged trains to run. The Lionel of N scale. Practically all my Kato engines run flawlessly on dirty track that stops Atlas and Intermountain dead in their tracks. Like Micro Trains, Kato also has a loyal following of diehards it seems. You could probably stamp "Kato" on green paper napkins and sell them.

I agree with Charlie on the subject of "me too" models. This can leave a lot of unsold merchandise gathering dust or blow out sales if manufactrurers aren't careful. I notice Walthers can't get Atlas money for their ex-Life Like engines and they are getting heavily discounted (they aren't worth Atlas money).

 

Which of course led to them labeling them as "Great Dome Lounges." Too bad Amtrak has lost the recipe for such classy travel (or maybe we the passengers have lost the appreciation...).

 

Word is that Walthers has test shots of their cars (10-6 sleeper in smoothside with skirts, smoothside without skirts in the middle, and P-S corrugated versions) and that they are really nice. They reportedly will have Kato-style truck pickups, which is a big improvement over their HO counterparts.
Charlie Vlk

 

I have appreciated the number of comments with emphasis on "Prototype". Charlie Vtk., J. Long, R.I.Straw and everyone else who has participated here. An excellent debate.

Here's my two cents. There are a number of things that have to work for me before I purchase a product. 1. Is it appealing to me? 2. Does it fit my budget? 3. Is it close to prototype? 4. (and weighted the most) Will I have fun operating it? Give me four yes's and it goes home as a keeper.

In my search for operational equipment for my layout finding something totally / 100% authentic and prototype is appealing. I grew up when the model railroad wig wags was / is / were consistently full of articles and prototype, nuts and bolts counting articles predisposing to setting the standard or at least implying one. However, if I wait until I can find a precise prototypical product, I may find myself in the ground pushing up daisies and with my luck, that would be goat heads and tumble weeds. Grin!