The discounted price difference between Accurail and others like Athearn,Bachmann, etc. is too low for people to buy kits to save money. Same is true for high end car kits vs high end RTR.
As Athearn (Horizon Hobbies found out) most people really prefer RTR over kits. And it’s not just cars - locomotive kits are gone.
RTR track, buildings, and scenery continue to grow in popularity. Eventually they will dominate the market.
Lowering costs will need more automation.
Paul
I think this is an important point. It seems the market wants detailed RTR models. There are kits out there, and nothing is stopping people from buying them.
I suspect that the challenge with kits from a manufacturer’s perspective is that the used market is still large given the size of the clientele.
Simon
You are not going to beat the tariffs, period. No consumer is. All costs associated will be passed on the to consumer. Manufacturers not effected by the tariffs will raise prices because that is now what the market will bear. They want more profits for stakeholders.
The only way to beat the tariffs is to remove them.
Otherwise, we pay, and no large manufacturer or country will suffer. Small hobby focused companies with niche markets might be damaged.
Or take this approach a step further and make various Business Cars, Coaches, Diners, Lounges, Sleepers, Baggage and RPO’s both streamlined and Heavyweight not previously available in plastic…..
It would be a great place to start……
2009 was the final year Athearn released kits. After that it was RTR and Genesis models from 2010 onwards……
Now come on you silly old men. You silly OTHER old men, that is. Ha! The way you talk, you’ve already lost.
So defeatist. “Economics too complex, manufacturing too hard, no one will buy kits, etc etc.”
Pish posh. Roundhouse was started by some musicians. Not exactly notorious economics experts! Go read about John Page’s visit in the 1956 MR. I think it was him. They were making plenty of trains by then, and it was still a very Dogpatch operation. Wheels were turned by a primitive fixed lathe tool setup on a drill press. Castings were zinc, made on an English DCMT hand operated diecaster that a competent mechanic could build in a garage. Which is exactly how DCMT got started in England, giving rise eventually to Matchbox cars, Lone Star diecast, OOO…
Bill Bowser cast bronze boilers in his backyard and made Scullin drivers because he could drill the holes. All of Bowser came from there. I bet ol Lee English is cursing himself for scrapping all that tooling now. I hope so!
Point is, yes, you can build kits. We can restart this again. We already did once, after WW2. Start small and build up from there.
The real risk is that, if your production methods are industrial at all, Boeing will come knocking and begging you to machine 500 little bell cranks, and soon you’ll be flooded with side jobs more profitable than your kit line. I know several guys…
And people will buy them. Gen z likes building things. They like tinkering. Take a look at the following Darth Santa Fe has amassed. They like steam trains too, oddly enough. Better than they like the graffiti covered Undec Pacific image of modern railroading.
You just have to sell it.
Musicians, people. Musicians turning wheels on a drill press. You gonna let yourselves be beaten by that?
Sure they do..
Seriously though. Steam trains, or high speed rail. They like the big old “Tartarian” Romanesque piles, too, not much interest in steel Butler sheds.
If somebody built a big setup based on a victorian’s vision of the future it would probably Furlow a whole new genre of the hobby into existence.
“Feldercarb”, anyone?
Don’t mind if I do. I haven’t been around here much since half past haggis.
It’s either ‘FelderGarb’ or ‘FelgerCarb’. Depending I suppose on what sort of yivshish is intended…
SURELY there are steampunk layouts!
No, I spelled it correctly. See definition:
[Feldercarb is a word used by the characters of Battlestar Galactica , referring to the putrid and crusty black grime that accumulates on machinery and requires scraping off during maintenance…]
Real steampunk or glue-gears-on-a-tophat cosplay steampunk?
That’s not how Glen A. Larson spelled it. End of story. 
Naturally I’d rather have ‘real’ steampunk – Difference Engine steampunk, or better.
On the other hand, there’s entertainment value in the gear-and-pipe sort, too, and I suspect there are a lot more enthusiastic fans who ‘do’ the latter.
One thing I’d like to see 3D printing do is make alternatives or add-ons to existing products to modify them. For example Bachmann makes a nice USRA 4-6-2 with a plastic boiler.
Suppose someone made a 3D printed replacement boiler but with a Belpaire firebox, in line with a Great Northern Pacific. Regardless the cost, would be a lot cheaper than the only alternative I’m aware of, which would be brass.
You could make caboose bodies designed to be accurate examples of various railroad’s cabooses, but the body made to fit on say a Walthers caboose chassis. Maybe even made to fit the old MDC wood caboose kit; with holes in the body already in place to accept the MDC grab irons from the kit.
The market disagrees with you.
He’s not talking about manufacturing them for profit in the historical toy-train production paradigms
What generation first pioneered makerspaces? Wish I could say it was mine but it wasn’t…
What you provide is the files, ideally with instructions how to tweak them and what materials to use. I believe Shapeways is an adequate demonstration of how this can be monetized, the files corrected responsively as necessary, and obsolescent or unsupported/orphan efforts kept maintained via ‘bazaar’ effort.
A key thing then becomes acceptance of particular sites as ‘trusted’ sources, that are easy to search for needed activity. The first of you that designs a proper BP-20 shell with all the details accommodated in separate components, let me know – I want a bunch of them.
I knew someone that did just that and had shapeways files for a couple of locomotive and car parts/ models that nobody else had. He took measurements of the prototype himself, designed everything, and offered them up for a little profit to himself. Unfortunately some moron bought one of his more popular models, made a resin cast and started undercutting him. Ticked him off enough he pulled everything.
But shapeways went out of business last year. I guess someone is trying to bring it back, but the marketplace is gone.