If you break down and strip the paint off a passenger car, you end up with an undec. Yeah, a bit more work than buying a factory-packed one, but you seem to do OK with decorating freight cars.
But it often is the case that people without your skills often do want to buy the exact model they desire RTR. If it’s a big road with lots of modeling demand, you may be in luck. if not, then that’s a sign you either need to pick up old-fashioned skills (in your case, you already have these) or simply change your prototype to one that’s more popular or to one that see things your way as a freelancer.
The problem here may really be more a case where people somehow believed because Walthers does multiple paassenger trains of UP origin, they will surely do the same for, say, the Monon. I wish they would, but I’m not going to blame Walthers for not getting me the train I want. The numbers don’t add up and I’m going to buy just one train if it ever does happen (which it might) unexpectedly. In the meantime, I can search for the old Walthers hospital train cars then start building my old.
Bottom line: If you’re a model railroader and you want it, you can always build it.
I doubt that Athearn RTR, Athearn Genesis, Atlas Silver and Gold, Walthers Proto are waiting for pre-orders before they will produce something.
Athearn Genesis recently missed the market for a recent release, IMO. They released a new GP40-2 in various paint schemes. The CSX version sold out in about 2 weeks. Other road names are still available.
It tells me that they did not produce these items based upon the number of buyers that happened to respond during a pre-order window, or else they would have realized that twice as many modelers want the CSX version over the other names practically combined (if pre-orders accurately reflect the level of demand now or in the near future). They just used their judgement and came up way short on the CSX versions while the other schemes are in stock at various dealers.
The thing is, it is not just a matter of skill, but also desire.
I know I am passionate about my freight car fleet. I have no problem spending hours assembling a resin kit or “re-kitting” and stripping a RTR car to make what I want.
Passenger trains… not so much. I need two to complete my layout plans (actually three if you count the mail train), but I find bulding and painting passenger cars BORING!
This is not a problem, I already have the two I need. However, the new stuff Walthers puts out sure is slick, and I would spend the money if it was a simple upgrade with minimal work.
If I had real money, I would buy a modern set from The Coach Yard and pay a professional to repaint them for me.
I am overwhelmed by the amount of replies to my post, so I hope you will get and see mine. I can understand the forum user Atlantic Central’s frustraion with the product search looking for past ones that where produced, like the 2017 release of the HO scale PRR 6-8-2 S2 steam turbine by Broadway Limited Imports I have a facination with and will look for until a possible second run is done.
I learned of Spring Creek Hobbies after watching one of of JLWii200s youtube videos, and then even have some past Paragon 2 steam and diesels I lilke. Glad you mentioned them.
This idea came up in conversation with a friend of mine who is a current hobby store employee, and he feels the buyers mentality has changed. Since so much hobby information is online and the educated consumer knows what is available, they often come into the store he works at already looking for what they want, a specific request, knowing very well that the store likely doesn’t have every single piece of equipment they want and they might have to bounce around between several online outlets and local shops. In addition he mentioned most of the newbie crowd (both people starting off and parents looking for gifts for their children) tend to buy the all-in-one train sets Bachmann, Athearn and other companies like that produce.
He also pointed out another observation which I thought about further… not a lot of new members of the hobby these days have any reason to buy matching passenger consists, if in part because passenger rail has been greatly diminished over the last 50 years in the US. How many people under the age of 40 remember an America with more than Amtrak, a few tourist museums and UP’s private fleet being their only major experiences with passenger rail? Freight rail, with its mismashed colors and messy appearnace though is extremely dominant and its very easy to model freight without worrying about well… matching anything at all! I have said it before, but if there is one last bastion of passenger rail experiences its in commuter rail, and I suspect it will grow to dominate the passenger model railcar production as the years go on.
A big gold star for your honesty here. At least you’re not blaming Walthers, Athearn, the “market” or whoever for not being able to scratch that itch, which is so often the case in these discussions.
In fact, such discussions would have been looked at with an eyebrow set at “Really?!?” 30 years ago, when RTR hardly existed in HO and by just being in the hobby led to the assumption that you have at least some interest in learning many of the basic skills.
Now, there’s relatively few basic skills needed if you stick with RTR. Pickers can’t be choosers, though, a good thing to remember when the angst levels on what is being made - or not - in easy-to-unbox these days start rising.
Which is not to say RTR doesn’t have a place. It most certainly does. Since Blackstone hit the market, I’ve built very few 3000 series boxcars, finishing my last 4 RailLine kits earlier this year after selling off most of my stock of those. It’s so much easier to buy than to build even if you have the inclination and skills if the right product is available.
But convenience models, like convenience food, just don’t satisfy like home cooked. If you’ve never tasted the difference, you’d not understand even though the hunger is satisfied either way. For more and more of us, that’s just the way it is.
Just because you don’t SEE Athearn talking about pre-orders on their website or facebook page does NOT mean they don’t consider them BEFORE making the product. I can give you actual examples where they advertised a Genesis F unit in more than one version (eg. ICG orange and white “creamsicle”, with multiple roof fans and grill arrangements), but the pre-orders were just not there, and they ended up quietly converting all orders into just the one version that they did actually end up making. Also, there actually was a public outcry on some forums when they cancelled a Genesis Seaboard Coast Line F Unit, and then made it or a similar version at a later date.
What you are not seeing is they generate the announcements like clockwork, almost on the same date each month, with a relatively limited reservation time window of perhaps a month or a couple. Then the big 6 remaining distributors place their orders. IF the orders aren’t there, the item isn’t getting made. It will be cancelled. They don’t make a big deal about cancellations; they don’t announce them to the world. The cancelled item numbers just quietly disappear (and no, I’m not smoking crack, you can go back and find the actual product announcements and see that the items just disappeared at a later point in time). Usually it’s just one version out of several that were offered, when it happens.
With Athearn, it does seem to be less likely than some others.
Hi, I apologize if I havent replied much to the responses on my thread. I am a bit overwhelmed will all of the replies, so I have commenet a but. I will need time to read thru them. Even I’m suprised its still going on like you are.
richhotrain,
All manufacturers are producing limited runs.
I hate to break this to you, but we are a niche market. Always have been, always will be. The difference between yesterday and today is that back then folks were either required to model railroads they didn’t really want to model, or had to make up a fictional railroad to justify buying the stuff they could actually get. Today, folks can model what they really want (like Tony Koester).
What this means is the Balkanization of our hobby. Everyone now gravitates to their own interests, which are as varied as each person is. This means that cheap, generic models just don’t appeal to the average consumer like they used to. That has nothing to do with the overall health of the hobby, it’s just different.
As for our unsold diners, it’s actually a perfect case to make in favor of pre-orders. If we, the NHRHTA, had only purchased what our pre-orders were (800) and added another 15% on top of that, we’d be in a good place financially. Instead, we went for the gold and got 1200 to get the best deal from Rapido. Now we have $42k worth of cars sitting around. If we sell them all, we’ll make a nice chunk of change, far more than we would if we had only ordered 960…but we have to sell them first. How many years do you think it’s going to take? Will it ever happen? Can’t you see that underestimating demand is far superior to overestimating demand in this business? Because as you can clearly see, “Build it and they will sell” is false.
I don’t mind if we automatically rule out 90-95% of the buyers. If there’s 250,000 model railroaders in the USA, a mere 5% of them is 12,500. That’s over 10 times the number of diners we purchased. And for comparison’s sake, we sold 2000 Rapido coaches and 1500 Rapido parlors before we got
Let’s be honest, no one likes pre-orders. No one looks forward to pre-orders. No one wants to see model railroading turn into a pre-order business model.
If a manufacturer thinks that a specific model is such a good idea, then build it. That is what capitalism is all about. That’s what entrepreneurs do.
What a pre-order is really all about is a manufacturer who throws out an idea and then sits back and waits to see how many modelers beg him to build it.
What pre-order does is to turn the concept of supply and demand on its head and reverse the concept into one of demand and supply.
Ummm, no. Capitalism is about making money. And part of being a good entrepreneur is making decisions about supply/demand/cost and so forth. It is not about laying out a bunch of one’s own money to obtain product to store in a warehouse hoping that enough of the fickle populace will purchase (eventually) so that I can break even.
To use the New Haven group’s car as an example, it looks like they tried to do it correctly. They had an idea and tested the waters. Had they just gone with the pre-orders they would have made out okay. But then it appears that they made a poor business decision. So right now they have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
I see a difference between pre-order and pre-pay.
If someone wants to ask for pre-orders and is using that to gauge demand, what’s so bad about that? Right now Rapido is looking for pre-orders on PC X72 and SP B-100-40 half-waffle boxcars. Would you be interested in one of those? Probably not. Would Sheldon be interested? Absolutely not. Am I? Absolutely yes.
I have no problem pre-ordering, so long as there is not any pre-payment involved. I don’t need whatever it is tomorrow. And if the item turns into vapor-ware, so what? Since it wasn’t going to be made anyway, then that’s no skin off my nose. And FWIW, I have never been asked for pre-payment.
Yes, I know that some of the limited run items will eventually show up on ebay, hoswap, and elsewhere. But time is also money. I don’t want to waste a bunch of time and energy searching for something just to save a couple dollars.
I prefer the term free enterprise to capitalism, more accurate. Free enterprise has two strands: invention like Jobs’ Apple and efficiency like Henry Ford’s assembly line.
“Build it and they will come” is just a line from a book of fiction that became better known as a line from a movie. That is an expression of the first type of free enterprise. Model railroad manufacturers are just not in that end of this business. Innovation is really not part of the business at all. Their task, in competition with others of like mind, is to offer product the market wants at the highest possible price those customers will pay. You can achieve that by delivering what the customer wants for slightly less than the “other guy”.
Pre-order is the free market dream. You don’t guess how many of what the market will buy, you simply ask the market. Before computers this was quite difficult but is the idea behind catalogues and mail order. Computers and the internet allow any manufacturer to employ this low cost type of marketing. Computerized manufacturing allows lower cost manufacture of “custom” units when computerized pre-ordering is utilized. You can now get the road markings and road numbers you want for no extra cost because the manufacturer no longer has to guess at the market composition, it knows exactly what to build and how many.
Many industries are now trying to utilize this very cost effective pre-order model. Cars are already being manufactured “just in time”. The old way of pre-building millions of cars and pushing them out onto retail dealer lots is still happening but the high margin low volume makers don’t do that any longer. Try and buy exactly the Porsche you want at your local dealer. If you are willing to wait you can do so easily but not otherwise.
I want to know for certain that I’m going to actually receive the road pilot version and the switching pilot version of BLI’s upcoming Santa Fe 2-8-2, in the road numbers that I’ve researched and know that I want based upon where they actually operated and when (my thanks to the hysterical society).
I want to know the price I’m going to pay (dealer already told me) so that I have time to save up for several mikados. Plus my dealer will also allow a layaway even on pre-ordered items and I will still get the same discount as if I pay cash immediately on arrival (though I would rather pick them up immediately).
I am not going to have to worry about my dealer being SHORTED on his order because some item is hot and only went to the biggest most powerful dealers as STILL happens far too often in other scales! I am not going to worry about missing out on the product as it turns up (surprise) without my even knowing about it, and then gets bought out from under me by others. In the old days, new products just plain showed up. YOU the customer likely had absolutely NO IDEA the new product was coming, because advertising in advance was much more limited than today. You didn’t even know what year the product was coming, and sometimes even then they advertised products for 5 years and never actually produced and sold them. I cannot tell you the countless number of times I actually unloaded 100 cases of trains off a truck to then have my boss be totally surprised at what showed up (it had been so long that he forgot what he ordered, and we were actually a distributor, not just a store).
EVEN THEN (40 years ago) the manufacturers were also using dealer reservations. You could only get certain models at the biggest selling dealers. Some were actually allocated based upon a points system to reward the “best” dealers (Pacific Fast Mail).
Yeah, collapsing the two together misunderstands and misstates the issues.
The mfg who is asking for pre-orders is simply doing the market research as best they can in the nearly total absence of R&D budgets or depts. What better thing to do than ask those who might buy them is do they want it?
And what is the alternative? Sending company reps to train shows to pass out surveys to the crowds? Expensive and not practical right now anyway. Cold calling model railroaders if you could somehow get their numbers? That won’t be popular either. Waving one’s hands around in the air then throwing a dart at a list of choices? Cheap but hardly conclusive.
Thus the idea of simply asking if you want one was born.
I’ve NEVER been charged for a pre-order.
I suppose there could be circumstances that if you didn’t respond to a pick-up order from a vendor that might result in some degree of disgruntlemnt on their part, but I think they’d probably just sell it to someone else. Ask beforehand if that might be an issue for you.
Now, people who want things sign up for pre-orders and there is the chance that the numbers won’t add up. Bummer. But we’re better off to get a little cancellation bad news from time to time than we are to just always count on customers “showing up” based on a hunch, leading to the failure of businesses that we all hope would otherwise be around in the future so long as they watch their budget and sales.
Pre-orders still do not guarantee delivery. I’ve seen pre-orders get cancelled because there wasn’t enough interest to meet the unspecified minimum quota in order to make the run financially viable for the manufacturer. It does happen on occasion.
John,
We’re more than willing to help you out with all your NH stainless steel dining car needs! [dinner] Although I have to say that, technically, they aren’t “Warm Orange” as on the NH PA’s, FA’s & DL-109’s, plus various hood units of the 1940s-early 1950s. The stainless steel fleet was painted what we call NH Serial #406 Orange-Red under the direction of NH Pres. Patrick B. McGinnis in the Summer of 1955. Before that, the cars were all Hunter Green. The eras are:
gmpullman,
Thank you for you purchase! Even if you didn’t get it from us, thanks. I also see a parlor and a parlor-lounge behind the diner. Nice. And I like the extra details inside. Very nice. If you ever need to know proper NH passenger train consists, let me know. Actually, here’s a link to a 1962 NH consist book available for free and matches your skirtless cars:
Just looking through it, Myles Standish was assigned to Train 6 (Mayflower) and Train 33 (Sundown), which each had a parlor-lounge, the diner, and 3 to 5 8600 coaches (depending on the day of the week).
richhotrain,
Actually, I like pre-orders. I can plan my purchases well in advance. I can save up or sell something older in order to get what I want. For example, I sold my two Overland FL9’s so I could purchase 3 Rapido FL9’s with sound.
One old adage in capitalism is to find a need and fill it. Well, how do you know what that need is without pre-orders?
Now that you say this Tom, the first time I heard of a preorder getting canceled was the Paragon 3 run of Broadway Limited Imports hO version of the NYC Commedor vanderbuilt Hudson. Any idea of what preorders had the preorder numbers to sell, but did not get approved due to lack of interest?
