I was reviewing another thread on this forum regarding places to buy MR products on the internet. Everything (cost) seems like it is going through the roof.
Over $18 just for one Athearn Genesis box car [:(!]- my goodness. (I do have one of these cars, but that’s about it.)
Is it just me who feels this way?[V]
Yes, it is getting expensive !! Too much RTR rolling stock, with Intermountain kits and such, I can see the RTR. But there are a lot “shake inn the box” kits that are coming out ony in RTR for more than twice the kit price.
I just wi***hat when they advertise RTR that they are RTR. I just bought some RTR Rivorossi UP passenger.cars, but they still need grabs to be drilled, installed, and painted.
ya just getting into this hobby is costing me a ton. so far i’ve spent probably $150 in 2 weeks. of course i did get everything i need but still i need to get more like locomotives and rolling stock. also i still need to build the bench work and all that. i’ve gotten 3 books though for probably $50 which sucks. but ya this hobby is expensive but i think it will pay off over the long haul.
I guess it’s a matter of perspective. If your roster is about done and you are heavy into DCC and computer control it’s actually getting cheaper.
Ken
I no longer put myself on a collision course to buy something. I won’t pay MSP and will wait it out for the discount. I waited 10 months to buy the Allegheny.
N scale and HO scale isn’t too bad price wise, just as long as you don’t buy too much stuff at once or have to pay $7 shipping for one item. I just check the large scale or O scale prices to put things in perspective, or a few Z scale items.
My feeling is that I started something I can’t afford to feed. A far cry from buying a record a week, when that was about 1 hour of time out of 40.
I decided to keep my magazines down to one $40 subscription of MRR, but my wife missed Trains, so I bought it on the stands a few months. - Tom
Costs for structures are steadily climbing, both builtup and kit form. Even some kits that have been around forever are getting pricey. Come on manufacturers, I’m sure you’ve recovered the tooling costs for kits that have been out for 20 years or even more.
I have a friend who is interested in building an N scale layout and is hesistating because of the cost of structures. Right there is a missed opportunity for the hobby to grow due to high prices.
I’m sure glad that most of my motive power was purchased 5-10 years ago when prices were more reasonable.
Charles
Hillsburgh Ontario
I’ve really searched for the HO railcars that fall into the up to 13 dollar range, and it seems a challenge. I find it hard to think a car is worth more than 10 dollars.
I’ve really struggled with engines too. I admit there is some great artwork out there but shelling out 100, 200 or more for a locomotive seems kind of loco to me.
I’ve basically stuck to some basic bachmann stuff and life like, as well as some model power entry level and roundhouse stuff. Some folks claim that the cheap trains are trash but you have to understand when you only have so much dough, you have to make do.
dcc, well I haven’t ever even considered it. considering computer prices maybe in a few years it will be next to nothing but I figure dc isn’t that bad when your careful to learn basic stuff and running just a couple of trains.
FOlks say in proportion to video games and such it all equates out, but I still agree with you that it seems like it is indeed an expensive hobby and I wish model companies could do a slightly less detialed version of their things at a more reasonable price.
I agree that prices are way to high. I am looking into getting my custom paint/model rialroad design firm into manufacturing. Due to the economics of tooling steel, I am relegated to casting resin manufacturing. But I know the techniques that can produce an injection quality car kit for approxamatly in the 10-15 dollar range. And thats factory painted and ready to assemble. Keep in mind this is freight cars.
All this research leads me to beleave that the companies are charging high prices because they can and people will pay them. This has had the side effect that I do not buy much new stuff any more and when I do, its when the hobby shop has a sale. ($45.00 for a Proto SD60 at the last one!)
Tell me about it! [:(!][:(!][:(!]
$50 Canadian for an Athearn Genesis Boxcar! YIKES!!!
I have one, but that’ll be it!
$50 Canadian for a Walthers Passenger car!! DOUBLE YIKES!!!
It seems to me that the manufacturers are indeed pricing the hobby out of the reach of most new comers. Especially the young ones. Yet we, the consumer, are to blame.
It doesn’t help when the current rage of PROTOTYPICAL CORRECTNESS is, in my opinion, driving the prices up!
Sure there’s still Like-Like, Bachman & Model Power sets to start people off but they’re still $100 Canadian. Way too much to pay for such inferior products.
Then you have DCC. An amazing piece of technology. EXPENSIVE!
Yes, there has been many good things to come to this hobby in the last ten years, but in another 5, no one will be able to afford to get into the hobby. Will it be worth it then?
Kato, Atlas, Athearn, Life-Like (Proto) are all pricing themselves out of the range of people they need to help the hobby continue.
Until everyone in the hobby realizes that we need a good supply of in-expensive but decent quality locomotives & rolling stock that doesn’t have every grab iron sticking off of every piece, the prices will continue to rise.
Sure my Genesis car looks great, my 5 Proto Newsprint cars look great as well, but so do my 100 Roundhouse & Athearn KITS.
WE are the reason why prices are going up. We cry Prototypical, we get prototypical.
We cry Ready-to-Roll, we get R-T-R.
ALL THIS COSTS MONEY TO THE MANUFACTURERS. Someone has to pay for it!!
Is spending $20 on a RTR car that we can get for $13 in a kit worth it? This is the same car that we’ve all agreed that we have to take apart to install a better quality coupler! WHY? Since when is building a kit from pieces taking 1/2 an hour or so worth the extra $7? When you still have to invest the same 1/2 hour to install the better quality couplers on
The problem is that every thing costs more. Golf is $30 at the cheap courses (Northern Virginia). That’s my yardstick. I don’t play golf anymore and I figure that between greens fees, balls etc I have $100+ to spend every month on trains. That’s about what I spend on average. I agree the startup costs can really make you stop and think, but once you get beyond that initial cost it’s easier to add a couple of cars here and a structure there. After a few years you have more stuff than you can use unless you have a huge layout. I’m currently in S scale and after ten years of accumulation I have more rolling stock (rtr and kits) than I can use all at once, but I still keep buying them, though not as many and I’m pickier about what I get.
Enjoy
Paul
Yes everything is going up but salaries. My solution is to keep the layout small and focus on a few high quality items. Its more fun detailing than spending money on new equiptment.
I agree, the start up costs must help slow down newbees to this hobby. It is expensive, but so is everything I guess. I am fortunate (I guess) to have most of what I need, then I can spend what I can on the extras.
Not only is the price of MRR items increasing but building materials are as well. I am self employed in
construction, and lumber, plywood, foam insulation all have almost tripled in price.So benchwork
can cost a small fortune. I dont know about the rest of the country,but here in Florida I have had
to increase bids on jobs just to offset material cost. Also,during huricane season, plywood always
seems to skyrocket. Dave
I would contend that model railroading has NEVER been a cheap hobby. Sure, there was a time when you could buy a boxcar kit for a dollar, but that was when you could get a Coke for a nickel.
For those who dislike prototypical correctness, head out to a model railroad show–the one I went to featured a boatload of Z-grade Tyco trainset retreads with horn-hook couplers for a buck or two apiece. I’d also disagree heartily–a properly designed and labeled car costs about the same for plastic and machinery, and personally I don’t find $8-15 an unfair price to spend for a spanking-new kit of what I’m looking for, if I can’t find it at same train show for $5. And of course businesses will charge as much as customers are willing to spend–that’s how you make money in business. And that is what they are doing, business–nobody makes model trains as a selfless public service.
If you really want to go cheap, do it the way the old-timers did it and start scratchbuilding out of cardboard and scrounged wood, raid your stapler’s staples for scale grab-irons, etcetera. That’s what Grandpa did when he didn’t want to spend the outrageous sum of $1 on a boxcar he could build for a quarter’s worth of parts.
And yes, it’s true, HO and N are still pretty cheap by dint of availability–folks who model 1:20.3 and other outdoor scales pay more for one boxcar than I have laid out for my entire collection of rolling stock and motive power. I mean, you can spend a ton of money on this hobby, but nobody is holding a gun to your head forcing you to do so (well, maybe, perhaps your local hobby shop owner is more forceful than mine!)
Good point Jetrock, I think that the avaliabilty of so much RTR and easy build kits has,in a way,
detoured modelers from scratch building.I personaly would buy a kit and assemble it before I
wittled a station from a block of wood! But then again i also paint and weather my structures,so
I try to keep with the idea that modeling is more than gluing a kit together and setting next to the
track. Dave
all the stuff i’ve bought so far has been fully put together already. i have one RTR CSX Boxcar i got for $5 at a show NEW. the rest i got for $5 as well and they were put together by someone else. hopefully after awhile and after i get everything i need like the benchwork done i’ll be able to spend time on putting together kits and learning more about the hobby.
as a teenager it is hard getting started because if you are like me you have a job which takes time away from the hobby then you have school which is just like a adults job (8 hours a day 5 days a week) then you have a job after school for maybe 4-5 hours so by the time you get home its like 9:00 and you have homework and have to eat so you don’t have time to “play” so to speak. also i have car payments i need to make so thats another $100 a month that comes out of the hobby. then since i have a used car i have to make minor, sometimes costly repairs. do you know getting a ignition key copy its $23.21. thats a outrage. anyways what i’m trying to say is if you a teenager and you have a job, and have to make payments for different things you won’t have a lot of money to spend which will maybe turn you off from the hobby. since getting my car and my job i’m trying to make every dollar i spend worth it. and if possible maybe not get stuff i normally would have. also my parents are beginning to not buy me stuff they used to like CDs, and magazines.
i know next weekend i will most likely take maybe $100-$150 out savings to go to a show. i want to get as much as i can before Christmas so i don’t have to spend a lot and then i can ask for different things at x-mas.
case in point. its really costly if you are a teenager and have other stuff to pay for. probably the same for adults but at least you are making more than $250 a month.
This is exactly the reason I often look into used rolling stock and locomotives at my local LHS.
I can often find Athearn and other good brands of rolling stock for about 2.50 a pop. They need a little TLC to get them back to spec but at least I am ot going bankrupt in the process.
I just purchased my first ever new Athearn Locomotive, A Chessie GP 30 that was priced at 37.50 for a bl;ue box. Did I actually give the man that amount? No I traded him a Model Power DDT switcher and a Tyco F7 Dummy for 20 dollars of the price of the new loco.
I find that in this hobby it is often better to look into used or closeout merchandise to save money. The LHS I deal with is mostly closeouts from other hobby shops in the area and I find a lot of older items that are no longer in production for about 40% off retail that way.
He currently has an MRC Command 2000 DCC system for 160 dollars that I am thinking about getting instead of a digitrax Zephyr that is brand new that he sells for 180. ALthough I may spring for the extra 20 to get the digitrax as it seems a bit more expandable.
My point is that if you don’t set your sites on the latest and greatest and just enjoy your hobby you can often get by without spending a fortune on your trains. The current RTR stock is getting rediculous in price though. I will not pay 20 dollars for a RTR car ever. I would rather have a slightly less quality car and modifiy it a bit to suit my needs.
Hawks, I feel your pain! I was a teenager once. I remember wanting to build a model railroad so bad.
And like you the money was tight, to say the least. I remember a sheet of plywood, an oval of
track and one Athearn loco. Now I’m in my mid thirties, make a better than average living, and am
just about 2 yrs into the hobby I waited so long for. Dont let $$ discourage you! Do what you can,have fun
and one day you will have the time and $$ . Dave
ya. i wouldn’t i’m broke by any means at my age its just that i want to save money for emergencies’i have probably $500 in savings right now at one bank. then in my checkbook i only have $87 but i’m putting another $100 in that tomorrow. then i have a gallon chug type thing filled with change. i started putting change in it well over 2 years ago and its finally full. i have to ca***hat in so i can make 2-3 car payments this month so i don’t have to pay for awhile and will be able to save money for after christmas shows. also since i wanted to get into the hobby my parents won’t help me pay for anything. except maybe a magazine thats about it. kind of sucks but hopefully i can sucker my dad into helping me that way he can help pay for stuff.
i sure hope a journalist makes a lot of money.