KITS

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

[:(!][V]I’am going to open an topic here that everyone will jump on I’am sure.

What has happned to the building kit to day?Conerstone saw mill $65.00 add on to saw mill $35.00 an $100.00 dollors for a plastic kit[:(!] WHY[?][?]some kits go over $200.00 WHY[?][?] Has plastic gone up in price[?]pollystirene at the LHS is still a resonable price,so plastic has’nt gone up.PSP in still cheap.
modular building kit $175.00[?]DPDM $15.00 for a few peaces[?]Campbells kits out of sight.Exsample ALTAS kit are going up also[?]LifeLike going up.
What happned to kits that did’nt cost much but could be made to look good[?]
Doe’s any one know who to write to at ALTAS to put a bee in there bonnet about redoing there old relabile turntable to a larger one[?]Or has Walthers got a block on Altas[?]They could re-tool there 9" to say an 15" and turn steam around.
Ok off my soap box but do any of you guys understand what I’am saying[?]
OLE’IRISH (JIM)

2

Jim,

The actual plastic material is a small part of the cost. Cost is labor to design the kit, build the molds, production costs, and shipping across the ocean - all are increasing. Also, many of the kits like you mentioned are large structures - Something we rarely saw years ago. The brick work & windows are much better than 20-30 years ago, and these are ‘American’ style buildings. At least we now have choices(pricey at times).

Jim Bernier

3

Plastic is made from oil.

But another reason is that the kits have better detail, so cost more to produce.

And as everything is made overseas nowdays, and the dollar is falling on the world market due to record US trade imbalances and deficits, I expect the price to get even higher !!!

4

I*'am really glad you guys can afford this new kits,I hate to see it happen thats all.
JIM

5

The PRRT&HS is working very clsoely with several manufacturers to insure accuracy of offerings. With one of the BLI engines the tender could have a choice of two doghouses that were common. The cost to produce the second one would have been in excess of $15,000. That for a part that is app. 1/2" x 1/2" x (at most) 1" high. We are all paying for detail we should be adding ourselves.

6

Truth is, Jim, many of us can no longer justify the expense. Hence, kitbashing or recycling, or scratchbuilding from other materials that are handy. It will be a frosty Friday before I pay $300 at my LHS for that 130’ indexed table. Even if I could find one for $200 on e-bay, it would mean that I might have do do without more important things, in the overall plan…like another sweet steamer.

7

Look out here comes a nostalgia trip from an “old timer”. Buildings now are MUCH closer to a reasonable proportion compared to the trains we run. In the 50s every MRR had a Campbell Purina feed store and every one of them had a spur w/ a 40’ box car parked on it. The cubic footage of the box car was only slightly smaller than that of the building! Nowadays you can get (or recently could have gotten) a blast furnace of all things! In two scales! News flash! Those big walls require big dies. The cost of the plastic is probably the smallest part of the total cost of the kit. I would bet that the packaging runs higher. The dies are the major cost and they dictate the cost of the kit.

8

A couple years ago, I looked into making a Milwaukee Road Pullman Standard, full lenght dome car. Looking into the needed production Items, here is what I found.

I needed dies for the following items,

Body-Roof-Dome Frame
Up Stairs and Down Stairs interiors.
Window Glazing
Three Axal Nystrom Truck.

However I split it, I needed at least two dies. One for the window glazing, and one for everything else. Talking to various die makers about this the lowest price I was quoted was $250,000. This would have produced a car similar in stature to the Bachmann Full Dome car. Since clearly that wouldn’t do, I looked into an individually pieced interior, (I.E. separate seats attatched to a floor, ect. lighting, working diaphrams, and all the other things to bring it up to par with the Walthers line of passenger cars. I ended up with close to $500,0000 needed for all the various dies. I havn’t even priced styrene, printing booth, or even just getting the molds “shot” yet. All this for a car that was purchased only by one railroad, where only 10 were constructed. There were second hand owneers that I could prabably get to appeal to others, but many of them wouldn’t work out due to the need to make licencing arrangements. Then on top of all that, everyone I surveyed said it better be Ready to Run to boot.

So when the latest Branchline Trains Pluman 10-X-X whatever sleeper comes out, which is most likely a car that saw far more extensive use than my dome car did, and it costs $80.00. I don’t complain nearly as much.

9

I think we are entering a age of very high quality structures that fall together and have good detail. But the prices indeed are going up.

I combat the high prices by seeking out older structures that might do the same job for much less off ebay.

That massive $300 turntable takes up way too much room and will simply cause a divorce in my family. I prefer to have several smaller engine houses around the area.

10

Jim,There are unknown thousands of us that feel the same way you do about the ever increasing prices of the hobby.Manufacturers has these Robber Baron MSRP that is a joke…Ever see at $99.00 engine discounted down to $64.95? Or a $139.99 dollar engine discounted to $99.00 or less? Why the Robber Baron MSRP in the first place if they can be sold far less then MSRP? Then you have those poor souls that cheers on the higher MSRP by justifying the costs.Still they fail to see the Tom Foolery that the Manufacturers is trying to pull with those Robber Baron MSRP.
Thankfully there is hope in this mess…We can buy at the best discount we can find or scratch build the buildings we need…We can cut corners by using cardboard or artist board…The same applies for locomotives and cars.Just buy at the deepest discount or better-but harder-is not to buy every new release…Of course in my case its easier said then done.[:0][;)]

11

maybe things will get so bad that some manufacturers will even move their factories back to north america where all their money is made , and actually put some money back into the economy of the people who buy their products.

sorry , small rant because i’m dissapointed that everything i buy seems to made somewhere ‘offshore’

12

Jim,

There are several facets to this issue:

You are comparing apples to oranges in your post. The DPM are the simplest, cornerstone are similar. Campbell kits have many more parts and detailled. Most of the $200.00 plus craftman kits build contest quality models that have 100’s (if not 1,000s in some cases) of parts and will take weeks to put together. Most of these kits are to scale and come with tons of castings and other cool stuff.

As to the cost, you are quoting MSRP. I have almost never paid MSRP for a kit. As long as you stay away from collector kits (FSM, Yorke etc…) you can find most of this stuff steeply discounted at hobbyshops, trainshows and Ebay.

My main theory about kits is that nobody actually builds what they buy. Every train guy I know has at least 5 or 6 boxes (i currently have six) of stuff that they havent built yet sitting around. I’m sure that most modelers who have been in the hobby awhile are like this. Interests change, people decide to change scales, run out of time etc. The upshot is that there is a big market in secondary kits floating around, almost always for lots less thanh MSRP. Check kits on Ebay. Last time I did a search I came up with over 5,000 listings.

Many kits are still not all that well detailed so watch out. My standards are very high when it comes to details, so I’m sure I’m going to step on toes here, but old Suydam, Muir models, IHC, Model Power, etc are very crude when compared to todays modern laser cut kits from companies such as AMB, FSM, Banta, Crystal River, Sierra West, RIo Grande Models, Grandt Line, SS LTD, Evergreen Hill etc. Some of these kits are more expensive, but they are much better kits in terms of detail and IMHO offer better value for the money. Old kits to look for include: Columbia Valley, Magnuson, Yorke, Cibolo Crossing, Lytler and Lytler etc. Campbell kits are nice but many of the details are now oversize when compared to newer kits and the wood they use has ve

13

I think there are many reasons for why structure kits cost more than they did previously.

  1. More detail. From what I can tell the detail available in today’s kits are much better than earlier kits. While I don’t know for sure, I can only guess that it takes more effort to produce the dies. Is it possible that increased detail requires more expensive plastic in order to capture the detail? Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me (which would be about everyone) can fill us in on this.
  2. Larger buildings. It seems today we have larger structures available. Used to be that an industrial building might have serviced one or two cars. Many today would not look bad with several. Bigger buildings means bigger dies - more work, see above. Also more plastic to make the thing. Bigger kit means more weight, increased shipping.
  3. Increased cost. While it may or may not be the largest cost of producing a kit, the nearly doubling of oil prices during the past year can’t be discounted.

Even with the increased cost - I think we are getting a better product. The DPM line is wonderful. One can now model a main street scene without having the same building appear twice. The Walthers kits are also way ahead of what used to be available. Many have separate window castings which make painting so much easier and I think are worth a little more than those buildings with cast in window frames. (Of course i hate it that many of these kits are limited runs and either are or will be retired). I think the “modular building kit $175.00” that Jim talks about is the new Consolidated Dairy from Walthers. This looks to me to be six kits in one (wouldn’t it be great if Walthers would sell these as individual kits? - hint hint). Given the size of a few pieces, it doesn’t seem all that out of line with other recent offerings.

What is interesting is that I think I spend less per hour of structure modeling than I did in the 80’s. I used to just glue the structure together an

14

Accuracy costs more (R&D, proofing, and tooling).
Tooling costs (molds are cut from steel) have shot through the roof.
Raw materials cost more (plastics & cardboard).
Labor costs more (even in China these days).
QC costs more (in general 30%-50% of anything made in China is a reject).
Sales are down (the hobby IS shrinking, and fewer people build kits) so the average cost per unit goes up to cover margins.

But frankly, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. The new Atlas house kits (beautiful, BTW) cost something like $14-$18 apiece; that’s not going to kill anyone. Accurail cars are still at an MSRP of $10.95, as are most Bowsers. Walthers carries a slew of plastic kits that cost under $30 (Walthers, Atlas, Bachmann, DPM, etc, etc).

If you can’t afford what you WANT, why not come down to earth and be more realistic about your modelling ambitions. Or maybe, learn how to scratchbuild.

15

Just a crazy thought — for you old rails, check the photos in MR from the 70’s and 80’s — much of what you will see is either scratch built or kit bashed and it looks mighty fine to me, wheather structures or rolling stock. 'Tis always an option ------

16

Don’t kid yourself. Look again at the MR’s from the 1970s and 1980s, and the single most common building you’ll find is the Atlas signal tower!

But you are right in one respect: there WAS a lot of scratch building going on back then. Not a lot of it was very GOOD by today’s standards, but they were having fun and not spending a lot in the process!

17

On my old layout, I had a Bowser 130’ turntable that was made out of wood and wood and some really basic metal castings. I just found a place where I can install a turntable on my new layout (forgot to plan for one, duh!), and so I took a look at the new Walthers. Blinked when I saw the price. Guess what’s going back in? Yup, my old Bowser wood/wood/basic metal. Hey, I’ll superdetail the thing after a while, but up to $300 just to spin a Mallet around? Uh-uh. Rather use the money to buy another Mallet.
Tom [tdn]

18

Here is something somewhat related.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23949

19

here’s an idea … maybe the hobby will shrink to the point where there will once again be very few manufacturers making stuff and we’ll all have to go back to scratch-building . MR could recycle all those old articles into books and those pdf’s they sell online …

not that i’m wishing for this , but it wouldn’t kill the hobby for me , i’d eventually learn to scratchbuild something that people would recognize as some kind of freight car or depot or whatever

20

I try not to spend more than 20 or $25 for a plastic kit. I agree some of the kits are getting outrageous. But I still think the DPM and IHC stuff is a good value. You can make them look pretty good with some added detail. I’m looking to buy a turntable and I want somthing better than the atlas one.I’ve seen some brass ones for $3500.(ouch!!!) Thats out of the question, so I’m probably going to bite the bullet and get the new Walthers 130’ er. $250. That will be my most expensive train purchase ever, but I’ve always wanted one. It depends on what level of quality you’ll pay for. I don’t know if it’s ALL high oil prices but that sure can’t help.