I throughly enjoy reading comments on this site, when time allows, every now and then.
I may be missing something, but looking at the inventory at a local shop, I see no difference in sales of kits vis. r-t-r, whether rolling stock, locomotive, structure and such.
All just seem to just sit there, day after day, month after month, year after year.
In other words, I see no difference in sales percentages.
I’m not the only one seeing this.
Well … it stands to reason that you don’t see the stuff on shelves that has been sold because it’s been, um, sold. The unsold inventory tells us less about the hobby than what the sales are – and of course there are shops with such outdated or unhappy inventory that, yes, essentially nothing sells. I have been to such shops.
There is one local place that is known as the LHS of last resort (and everyone from Milwaukee will know EXACTLY what hobby shop I speak of). Since they seem to sell nearly nothing that is where you go when you find yourself needing a long discontinued kit. And sometimes sure enough there it might be. Possibly on the floor. Perhaps trodden on. And maybe even reeking of cat urine.
I am reminded of the old joke – when you’re looking for something, it’s always in the last place you look.
Dave Nelson
What you are seeing is shelf stock that is probably a couple years or more beyond release. Any hobby store owner these days will tell you that the big turnover is in new release items that are sold before they ever reach the store shelves. The same store owners will also tell you that it is far easier to sell an RTR item than any kind of a kit. Undecs and kits are desired by a minority of shoppers.
Hope i never find that at a train store hope the health dept finds it first.
I think some kits sell a lot because they are cheaper than RTR, and fun to build. I think Accurail does very well.
Undecorated “kits” are another story. Most manufacturers only have one run or none. However you don’t see undecorated kits for sale that much, but you still see the painted products for sale. The great thing with undecorated kits is that you can paint them for your prototype.
Well there is a difference because a number of kit manufacturer have switched to RTR only in the last 15 years. In fact the trend of the 21st century is towards more RTR in rolling stock, structures, track, etc. Athearn and Roundhouse are the big two of course, but several others have switched as well. Locomotives are almost all RTR in every scale.
Partly, this is because with cheap overseas labor, low end kits can be assembled and sold RTR for almost the same price as kits. But it also reflects a large segment of the buying public’s preference for RTR.
I suggest if you like kits like Athearn and Roundhouse you start buying them at train shows where they are still plentiful and frequently quite cheap. Locomotive kits are mostly gone although I still a few occaisionally. How long low cost kit manufacturer’s like Accurail stay in business will be interesting to see.
Of course as the labor costs go up overseas, manufacturers have to shift countries. Eventually this stops and prices go up. Kits may make a resurgence then, but I wouldn’t plan on it any time soon.
Personally, I have a pretty good stockpile of kits in 3 scales, to which I add from time to time as I find kits that appeal to me - mostly older unbuilt kits at train shows.
Paul
Paul
If you’re worried about kits disappearing, including those you have to paint and letter yourself, come over and join us in narrowgauge land. Just about all our kits requires fairly complete kit-building skillset, from reading the instructions (I know, I know) to putting the decals on.
Yes, there is RTR equipment if Colorado is your focus. Locomotives, if not HOn3 Blackstone, tend to be brass, although cast metal and plastic ones have also come to O narrowgauge.
Cheap? It’s generally not, although bargains can be found. You can definitely squeeze more action and layout into a given space with narrowgauge vs modern standard gauge.
This is one of the big attractions for me, in my thinking of switching to Sn3, as there is very little offered in RTR stuff. For me, the hobby is not about plopping the latest RTR “Bobble” down on the track and thinking: Man, I’m modelling, now! It’s about carefully building and detailing each model and the pride I derive from doing so.
Others can do the hobby RTR and it appears that the manufacturers are more than happy to provide the products they disire; but, that’s not what I want.
I was just in one of the few hobby shops left in a 100 mile radius, and there, even though I probably don’t need another HO box car, I found and bought a kit of a Northern Pacific Double Sheathed box car kit from Accurail. So, if I hobby shop will continue to stock kits, I will continue to buy them!
If the kits have sit on the shelf waiting for me to get to them; well, I’m just happy they’re there!
I have close to 50 RTR cars I bought over the last 7 years…
However…
I notice the former Roundhouse boxcars and Railgons from Athearn is still a foot to wide and with that knowledge I stopped (*see exception below) buying the RTR cars and returned to the Roundhouse kits or buying them on the use market for $5.00 with KDs and metal wheels…I have also bought several Accurail kits that I use with my Atlas/Atlas Trainman and Walthers cars since they are scale width.
*The only exception is if a Aberdeen & Rockfish or LNA&C 50’ RTR boxcar is released.
I am a kit builder. I have exactly zero rtr. I did have a caboose that was rtr, but it is long gone. I have decided to stay in HO and build old MDC, Labelle, and other craftsman type kits. I have several Downtown Deco buildings that need to be, and will be, built. That is the fun part…I enjoy building things that not everyone has.
Even my locos are not rtr and I don’t require the latest and greatest. In fact, I only have one China built loco, a 70 ton Bachmann. I am thinking about adding another and both will be repainted to meet my needs.
Forget what you see in one or two stores, that is only a tiny snap shot of the market and of no statistical value. Also keep in mind, if the stores prices are near MSRP, whatever they have on the shelves will move very slowly no matter what they have for sale. This is a trend I have noticed visiting hobby shops all over the country in the past 30 years as I moved or travelled for business.
Instead, look at what new products have been and are being produced - just look at the last 10 years. THAT tells the story. Very little in the way of kits have been produced in the past ten years vs. RTR.
Most major producers of HO train cars have discontinued kits. Let me enumerate:
Athearn blue box kits - discontinued
Walthers kits - discontinued
Intermountain decorated kits - discontinued (only a small availability of undecs now)
MDC kits - discontinued (some of what is left of the line are now offered RTR from Athearn)
Concor, I’m not sure if I’ve seen any new rolling stock kits from them
ExactRail - relatively new to the market, all decorated models are RTR - they offer a token availability of kits for those who like to roll their own - probably amounts to less than 1% of their sales
There is only one “major” kit maker still left - Accurail
This Kits vs. RTR topic comes up every couple months. The situation is plain if you have been watching the hobby closely, RTR is where market is for most of the sales, and there is a very small market for kits, yes, very sma
If money were no object, I would buy almost everything RTR. But since that is not the case, I buy a mix of kit and RTR, both rolling stock and structures. Sometimes a structure I want will only be available in one or the other so I have no choice. I have bought quite a bit of Accurail because I can throw one of the kits together in about 10 minutes, substituting KD whisker couplers and Walthers wheels. I’m not big on fine detail and Accurail meets my “good enough” approach. I figure I save $5-10 a car with Accurail over a similar quality RTR car. If I buy RTR rolling stock, I almost always replace the couplers because most of the ones that come with the RTR cars are junk. Sometimes I replace the wheels as well.
More and more outstanding structures are coming out as built-ups. I take advantage of that whenever I can. One thing I cannot stand are structure kits with the windows and trim molded to the walls. To me is one of the biggest wastes of time having to tediously hand paint that detail. I try to avoid those types of kits as much as possible.
Even despite the fact that money is an object for many, RTR still seems to overwhelmingly rule the market if you look at whats been produced over the past 10 years.
That being said, there is such a glut of unbuilt kits having built up in the US (if you look at private collections, train shows, and some shops) that even though production of kits has dropped to a small trickle, there is still a good supply out there, truly.
Obviously money is an object for many, so the good news is, kits are out there - just not always in the traditional places like your LHS. But visit train shows and swap meets often, and check auction sites, HOSwap, HOExchange (yahoo groups) and you’ll more than likely get what you need.
I have mostly bought RTR because that has been what has produced what I need for 1970’s and 1980’s D&RGW and SP modeling, but I still buy kits now and then to fill in gaps in my roster and yes, I go through times where money is tight and I can’t afford much of the new RTR stuff. For many of us, to model a RR accurately, we need to pick from both to get a nice cross section of an accurate fleet.
The thing I don’t get about these RTR vs. Kit topics, is it doesn’t have to be an either/or thing. Variety is only a good thing - we can have some of both - nobody is going to get brownie points because they are exclusively one way or the other, although some seem to be proud of one side or the other. Enjoy yourself. There is good stuff for everyone on the market!
OY…that would be a bit…[xx(]
I would think that if you had a rather large layout, you would want or need RTR. Otherwise, you would not have any trains to run. It also might get pretty repetitive building a bunch of what is just about, the same model over and over.
In my case, I tend to obsess over little details when building anything so, it takes, what seems like, forever!
I have a small layout so kits are fine (or RTR or already built from Ebay). One of these days I want to try one of those Funaro kits.
Yes, it takes a bit of time to build up your roster of frieght and passenger cars. For me that is what the point of this hobby is! Having fun, doing what you like to do. I have been at this iteration of model railroading for more than 26 years. It maybe took me a year; or, so to get to the point where most the track was down and I could run trains. At the time I started, RTR stuff was toy train quality, I built 30-40 Athearn blue box and Roundhouse rolling stock which took maybe all of 15 minutes to build. So, by the time I had the “Bare Plywood Shortline” ready to operate, I had plenty of cars and locos to operate with. Now I have about 130 cars and got rid of most of the BB and MDC stuff and built more detailed stuff to replace it with. I could not do this now, as the P2K, Branchline, Intermountain and Red Caboose stuff is all RTR.
My point is: You make the time to do the things you want to do. I like building from Kits and scratch, most everyone else seems to want RTR! There you go!
That’s enough of this tangent for me, now back to the O.P.'s question.
Unfortunately we dont have any LHS’s here anymore. We have the ‘shopping mall’ type of ‘toy store’. Pretty much your standard AC4400 BNSF loco, some Bachmann easy track, some buildings in a different scale, and a few packs of lychen if its a good week. Not an appealing appetite to a modeller.
Exactly.
Depending on your prototype, RTR may or may not even be a factor. For the old, obscure or narrowgauge, you usually don’t even have a choice, with the exception of Blackstone’s recent offerings of HOn3 RTR that allow the choice of buying and unboxing models of many narrowgauge prototypes or buying the kit from someone else.
So you may be limiting what you can do if you want only 100% RTR or vice versa. More and more, we see models offered that never were or will be kits. Personally, when it comes to motive power and rolling stock, while I prefer kits, my slogan is “By any means necessary…”
Yeah, another good reason for RTR. After a couple of dozen Rail Line Rio Grande 3000-series boxcar builds, I’m not learning anything new about that. Yet, I need a bunch of them, so very glad those folks in China will build them so beautifully and inexpensively. I have a few Rail Line kits stashed away for special projects, but sold off the rest of my unbuilts after Blackstone looked like it would be around.
Another point. You can still enjoy decorating cars, even with RTR, by getting out the paint, etc and weathering that RTR equipment. Plenty of room there for individual expression. I must admit that I only order the weathered Blackstone locos and cars now, when they are available. But RTR is no bar to getting out the airbrush if that’s what you enjoy doing.
Like many have said, it is not a matter of one or the other. I’m building a large layout and it needs lots of rolling stock
For me, I like to build models, so I often chose kits if they suit my needs,
But I have lots of RTR stuff as well - EXCEPT, that virtually none of them make it from the box directly to the layout - most get my “special” trucks, all get REAL Kadee couplers, and most get some VERY LIGHT waethering.
Also, while I like detail and reasonable accuracy, I gave up the rivet counting thing decades ago. A nicely weathered Athearn Blue box model is just as welcome on my layout as the latest B&O caboose from Spring Mills.
AND, because I am one of those “freelance” modelers with my own roadname, I always have an eye open for undecorated models that my home road roster requires.
I build craftsman kits from wood/metal/resin, I build plastic kits of every detail/skill level, and I buy (and modify) RTR of every price/detail range - because my primary goal is to build a model railroad witth a very specific theme.
AND, I have a fairly large roster of older models, Varney metal kits, Athearn metal kits, Silver Streak wood kits - all still running and looking just fine among the newer models.
As for why which shop has what, or why manufacturers are doing what they do, I’m bored with those discussions - I will only say this, I’m glad I have most of the equipment I need for the theme of my layout.
Sheldon
I would think that the abundance or lack of a LHS would play a part in what people like rtr or kits. Personely I prefer kits but I do have quite a bit of stuff I have bought over the last several years that is rtr. All of the rtr stuff I have was bought after the LHS where I lived many years ago went out of business, because that was the only way I could get some things that I needed. I got into the kit scene after that and pretty much that is all I buy now.