After reading the latest several latest threads regarding the demise of the LHS, limiting supply and demand, etc., I would have to say yes and like everything else the little guy (LHS) is being squeezed out. Whether or not this is being engineered by the “Manufacturers” to reap a bigger percentage of the profits I’m not sure. But beware if we buy exclusively or are forced to buy exclusively from the “Big Box” online retailers then the hobby will perich as we know it.
I know this has already been said and some have already come to this realization but to return to my original banner question “Is High Detailed Plastic becoming the New Brass?” Is this having a grave impact on the hobby and the LHS more than we realize?
No, because brass is heavier. Plastic is all light-weight and brittle, you know?[:D]
I support my hobby shop as much as I can. I think it’s the internet in general that’s hurting so many hobby stores. Why drive out to a place that may only have a 20% markdown from the MSRP when you can order from an online store from the comfort of your home and get a bigger discount? I don’t think local stores will ever be completely gone, though. Many of them just need to modernize a bit more. Keep up with the times to keep up the sales, and have a strong focus on good customer service.
If manufacturers are only making things in small batches anymore, isn’t that partly our fault? We all say “more detail!”, “more electronics!”, “better sound!”, “low cost!”, “more variety!” With that mindset, the manufacturers can’t afford to make continuous productions of models anymore, except for maybe Bachmann with some of their generic and train set models.
I agree with Darth Santa Fe on this point: No, because brass is heavier.
But when it comes to detailing and prices: yes! I totally dislike this development since I´m always prefering metal/brass rolling stock, because it simply gives me a more realistic feel. It´s a train, so it should be made out of hard stuff like metal, brass or aluminimum. Never really liked the feel of plastic. And much of the detailing nowadays is extremly unnecessary. I mean who needs every single detail that the underside of a passenger car can have for example? You never see most of these things in operation, and it just pushes up the price. And with plastic rolling stock I am always afraid in case of a derailment that something might get broken, while with brass I´m totally relaxed since it´s so much more stable. But I must admit that there are quite some nice plastic passenger trains around, and when they aren´t available in brass, they are a nice alternative. For example I really like the San Francisco Chief, but there is no way I would ever pay more than 40 $ for a plastic passenger car, no matter how much detailing it has. It´s simply not worth more in my eyes.
IMHO absolutley…The plastic engines are better detailed then their brass predecessors and nearing the cost of 70/80s brass prices.The less preorders the manufacturers will probably go to 1 of 5,000 produced.
The scary part is a lot of those brass importers closed shop when prices went through the roof and beyond.
Is this having a grave impact on the hobby and the LHS more than we realize?
Tough question but,IMHO the hobby in general no since there are cheaper cars and locomotives available.
As far as the LHS and IMHO the squeeze been on those shops for the last 10 years those shops that cling to the old business method will close as we are seeing and reading about on almost a weekly bases.The modern shop will have a on line presence will survive.
Will the manufacturers go direct sales only like Exactrail?
Metal engine weigh more, but I do not want to return to the 70’s! Shorts/Pick Up issues were standard fare back then. I have seen too many brass engines run great on 3’ of flex, but fail to get through a yard ladder. This drove me to plastic diesels back then. The advent of good plastic steam from Bachmann/BLI with sound & all wheel pick up added 7 good running steamers to my layout. Plastic/DCC/Sound reduces weight & thus pulling - I’ll take the reduced pulling for smooth operation.
As far as the Internet killing off the LHS - They have been dieing since the 70’s. By the 70’s, MR & RMC started featuring large multi-page ads by discounters. The first wave of old school hobby shops stated to close up as the owners retired or cound not compete. One cannot make it on detail parts/paint for sales.
The hobby is split between two groups. The first is the casual hobbyist - He is not ‘hard core’ and will be satisfied with what is available through places like Hobbytown or Hobby lobby. This is the largest group. The ‘hard core’ group(us) wants the selection and the ‘top shelf’ products. A good LHS was able to cater to this group and make money back in the 80’s. In the 90’s, the hobby got more technical(DCC) and the Internet started to become available. The LHS’s for the most part did not have the technical expertise to sell/service the DCC products, and folks found that there were web sites that either offered technical assistance or sold the product at a heavy discount - The best of both words. Some LHS’s(like Engine House Serices in Green Bay) developed that technical expertise and have been quite successful. They also discount and go to local train shows. I feel this is the model of a LHS that can survive - They do not compete on ‘rock bottom’ prices, but do provide service/education at their st
No. Brass is small runs with a lot of hand work. Also there is no second hand market for used plastic like there is for used Brass. And while today’s plastic matches yesterday’s brass in price, today’s brass is still quite a bit more than plastic.
I’ve generally stayed away from brass mostly due to the cost factor and also from what some of you have said about it not running well. I’ve never quite understood why the brass manufacturers simply don’t mount their brass shells on a time-tested and proven mechanism from say Atlas or Kato instead of making their own.
“Brass” covers a pretty broad spectrum. You could always find a broad range of quality and value among imported brass items. Some pieces were wonderfully made, and many are still highly desirable today. Then there were always a few items on the market that represented the other extreme. Many early brass diesels had terrible mechanisms, and there are a few that can only be saved (as far as practicality is concerned) by tossing the original mechanism and putting a nice Atlas or Kato mechanism under the old shell. Some older brass steamers were temperamental and needed a lot of fiddling to make them run right; and those old open frame motors just had to go. Some had really terrible gearboxes.
On the other hand, many of the older brass models represented unique prototypes that would never appeal to a mass market. So if we didn’t have the brass model, we wouldn’t have a model at all unless we scratchbuilt it. In many cases, they ran beautifully, right out of the box. In other cases, a bity of minor tinkering was all it took.
I have a total of four articulated locomotives. Three are older brass locos of rather high quality, and one is a more recently produced plastic model. The brass locos articulate in the way that a real articulated steamer does, with the engine at the smokebox end swiveling, and the engine at the firebox end being rigid. The plastic loco simply looks wrong to me when it tries to negotiate a curve; but the brass locos all have the correct appearance. As far as I know, the Intermountain S.P. Cab Forward is the only plastic articulated that’s built right. I wish they would produce more articulateds that way.
This serves to illustrate a basic difference between the philosophy that gave us brass models, and the philosophy that gives us plastic locos. Brass models were intended to appeal to the modeler who wanted to r
You don’t see much undecorated RTR plastic out there…just saying.
I suppose the premise of the questions is that today’s plastic = yesterday’s brass in terms of exclusivity, cost, and over the top detail. I think the detail in plastic is generally better, but even the more expensive plastic stuff is nowhere near the exclusivity of brass and, once adjusted for inflation, the price still isn’t comparable. I also think you generally get better features in plastic than in brass, adding to the value of plastic.
The Blackstone HOn3 line is a good example of this. ~$500 sounds like a lot for a loco, but it’s superdetailed (even weathered if you want it) with an excellent sound decoder already installed. Roll it out of the box and away you go. Then compare that to the ordeal of getting a brass K, even if just straight DC, running well. The only HOn3 brass that is even comparable to a Blackstone K are the Division Point K-class brass models – at a price roughly $1,000 higher.
I’d say that plastic, done right, is way ahead of brass.
It is worth remembering that brass got started as a low priced offering made with an available and easily worked material by workers in Japan who had a tradition and history of clever workmanship with small things AND a very meager post-War standard of living. American servicemen were bringing back brass engines that cost them very little in the 1940s, but when I think back to what were described to me as very early brass engines, they tended to be NYC Hudsons and similar almost “cliche” steam engines, not the more obscure stuff that came later. When I was a boy the parish priest had HO trains and had a Japanese 4-6-4 that I think cost him $15 or $17 in post war Japan. That was cheaper than the Gilbert HO 4-6-4 or the Bowser NYC Pacific.
Some of those early brass engines were rather approximate in scale, too, but that soon improved, and eventually some brass engines were essentially in regular production not special runs (Tenshodo’s USRA 0-8-0 in kit or RTR comes to mind, ditto the Santa Fe 2-8-0 that PFM sold for years).
The Japanese standard of living improved as well to the point where brass became a fairly high priced item by the mid to late 1950s, and by the 1960s you started to see limited runs of more rare prototypes, such as the Western Pacific and Great Northern steam that PFM was fond of. Production eventually shifted to S. Korea because for a time their standard of living was lagging. Obviously that has changed. If N Korea was not being run by such dangerous crackpots I suspect brass production would have shifted there. There are still places with low standards of living but they don’t have that same tradition of fine work and skill to close tolerances.
Will prices ever go down and production runs increase in size? No, but I am not sure that is the real question. I think the real question is, will the market for model train locomotives grow less fussy about accuracy a
It has ben done, unfortunatly GEM choose to mount their brass shells on Botchmann Drives of the 70’s resulting in a brass model that nobody wanted, and hastened their exit from the brass market in the late 70’s.
I myself prefer my steam locomotives to be brass as I believe they will outlive any plastic steam engine built today, but the brass diesels are not any better than plastic right now, although I have a few brass diesels that have not ever and may never be made in plastic. Also the plastic diesels will be around as long as the parts are available, which based on what a lot of importers are doing is not a possiblity as it once was with Athearn, and the scarcity of repair parts is going to be a problem.
Paul,There is a use market/second hand for plastic cars and locomotives-check e-Bay,train shows and the various groups like the old HO yard sale and other yahoo groups.I’m told there’s groups on face book as well.Some hobby shops have used shelves as well.
I suspect there’s a lot of hand work adding details on today’s cars and locomotives.
You can’t really appreciate brass engines until you have soldered your own from a etched kit! The joy of making it work and detailing is pure bliss! Buying a RTR is just that: RTR, no matter if it is metal or plastic…
I believe that “used market” probably needs to be defined. Certainly there is a lot of plastic that is re-sold on E-bay and so-forth. However what is the discount from original price? I would think that used brass items would command a higher percentage price from the original, assuming that the seller knows what he has.
The Bachmann chassis used was actually the best the Chinese had to offer at the time (not the 4-wheel drive plastic ones used in train set diesels). Heavy metal construction, 5-pole can motor, all wheel drive and pickup, and smooth, durable gearing. Bachmann used these drives early on, and anyone who’s ever owned one can tell you that they were good runners. The real problem was the body. The GEM brass F9A was well below the standards set by plastic F7A models from Athearn and Mantua/Tyco. Just look at the Bachmann F9A. It’s an exact copy of the GEM body. Why get a more expensive but poorly detailed brass model when you can have a much better looking model for so much cheaper?
Here’s the rub…How rare a plastic engine is the higher priced on the use market-example would be my P2K Ohio Central GP7 and the hard to find P2K GP30 HH lettered for N&W/NS and I&OC.These usually sell near full MSRP or slightly over-with or without the box.
Common used Athearn BB engines should net around $10-12.00 with all handrails,horns etc…I seen dealers at train shows selling new BB for as low as $22.50 with very few takers.
Atlas and Kato seems to have a higher use price then other brands.Of course beware the yellow and red box engines can be had at most train shows for around $30-40.00 in good shape.
A locomotive in its original box and papers can fetch a few more dollars then one without.
I been horse trading for years and my guess is the percentage varies due to several things including demand…
Brass steam engines that ran flawlessly, straight out of the box: W&R USRA 0-8-0; Challenger and Key B&O EM-1; Several Railworks PRR engines (but I’m not nuts about the coasting drive). All of these ran comparably to a Kato or Atlas diesel. Those were the standouts. Others by Precision Scale, Key Ltd. and Overland also rated high in my book. Most Westside engines were fine, although a little tinkrering was sometimes needed. PFM and Akane engines just need new motors. But there are other brass items that were never worth the money or the bother. For diesels, I’ve never seen a brass one that performed better than an off-the-shelf Kato or Atlas. Collectability is somewhat important, but I won’t buy unless it’s a model that represents an item I want for its own sake.
Thankfully, when it comes to N Scale brass, we have Spookshow’s locomotive encyclopdia. It defiantly helps to know what you’re getting into before you buy.
The joy of making it work and detailing is pure bliss! Buying a RTR is just that: RTR, no matter if it is metal or plastic…