I would like to know why after decades of neglect 2 manufacturers will produce the same model within months of one another.
Example. The HO streamlined PRR K4. 1st Bachmann then BLI.
I can see why everyone will want to field a UP SD70 or a Big Boy, but the K4? Now that has to be a slim market and where there may be the Bachmann guys who just wont come up with the cash for a BLI and vice versa there will be those who buy BLI and wouldn’t accept the Bachmann specimen there must be a fair sized mid ground who are slightly ambivalent and they are the first come first to buy folks who have been missed by the second offering.
BLI have had the chassis for this for years and years so why now?
From management decision until product in stores is a fairly lengthy process. Some times faster than others, but slow. And no one announces upcoming produces until they are very close to a production run.
A unique item, probably is from obsurce prototype, which means a small potential market.
Ever since I was a little kid, it has been a Railfan culture thing to debate whether the SOUTHERN PS4 or the PENNSYLVANIA K4 was the best Pacific locomotive.
The K4 models always sell. It seems like an easy decision to make a model of one every few years.
Unless things have changed in recent years, I don’t think that is true that no one announces upcoming products unless they are close to a production run. I remember BLI announcing a delivery date within few months for their Dreyfus streamlined Hudson. I waited close to three years before it hit the market. Even then they might have been pushed by MTH announcing they were going to offer the same loco. I had a similar experience with Walthers original 130’ turntable. As I recall, the delivery date kept getting pushed back for more than a year.
I no longer take announced delivery dates seriously. I’ll believe it when I see it. Until somebody actually has a product to sell, I’m not interested in what they are planning. It means nothing to me.
This is not a new problem. In the early 1980’s, Atlas, Stewart and MDC/Roundhouse all released RS-3’s at the same time.
Today, with more product coming out than ever before, duplicate models are more likely. Why? Because models can take years to get to market, and all that time spent on research, design, and tooling will be wasted if a company cancels a product after they learn someone else is doing it. And because profits in this hobby are not vast, companies are very reluctant to throw away R&D/tooling money. They’ll do it if the orders aren’t there, but if there’s a chance to make money, they will release the model.
In this particular case, they are chasing different markets. BLI is high end, and Bachmann isn’t. Apparently, both feel they can sell enough to make a profit.
davidmurray,
Announcements are at least a year before delivery these days, and some times much longer. Stuff happens, as they say, and delays due to factory problems, lack of pre-orders, tooling issues, and global economic problems can all cause huge headaches for everyone.
John-NYBW,
The one thing that’s good about long waits is that it gives one time to save up. In today’s limited run world, if you wait until you see it you might miss it entirely. Personally, I’d much rather have this kind of marketplace vs. one where I either miss things because it sold out before I knew about it, or where things don’t get made in the first place because companies only make the most popular items for decades (like the old days).
Given the popularity of the Pennsy, as well as help from the PRRT&HS, I think a streamlined PRR K4 will probably sell well. And, depending on how many units Bachmann and BLI end up manufacturing, they probably can be had at discount IF you’re willing to wait for the price to drop after it’s been on the market awhile.
That seems to be the norm now in MRRing. Pay full-price now, or…take a chance and purchase it at discount later when the sellers are trying to move them.
For some reason I have never understood, we seem to be willing to accept things in this hobby that we would never accept with any other consumer product. Do you think Apple would still be in business if they had delivered the original MacIntosh computer 3 years after their original announced delivery date?
Apples Watermelons and oranges, John. Personal computers (PC or Mac) and MRRing are two totally different markets. The former is very large and ubiquitous, with a wide application field - even into MRRing; the latter is fairly niche with a much more limited market.
So, you just can’t draw an anology between the two because they are so different from one another.
You don’t hear about this now, but back in the 1960s there was a problem with special interest groups with elaborate letter writing campaigns to the brass importers asking for this or that somewhat obscure steam locomotive, with the implication if not overt promise that a market of X number of modelers was waiting and ready to buy. For fairly obvious reasons they’d send the same communications to various importers and from time to time more than one importer would snap at the bait and have the same locomotive (or other model) produced, only to learn that the promised “lead-pipe cinch” group of buyers was now split between multiple options.
Whether that explains some of the duplication we see from time to time I do not know. But it’s not surprising that competitors who serve the same markets sometimes make parallel decisions, because they are listening to the same “noises.” It happens in book publishing from time to time – two parallel biograpies of the same person released at the same time, to the commercial detriment of both. Sometimes it even happens with movies.
First of all, I don’t model the UP or the PRR, but I’m way more likely to buy a K4 than a Big Boy or SD70 (whatever that is).
The street price of the Bachmann loco is about $280.00 The street price of the Broadway loco will be likely be about $440.00 But based on my own personal experiances with both brands, nothing suggests to me that the Broadway model will be better quality or more detailed.
The only advantage the Broadway model might have is better sound, maybe even at the expense of some detail.
I don’t like onboard sound, so that would move me toward the Bachmann model.
Bachmann had a non streamlined K4 model before Broadway was even in business…
There was way less of this duplication years ago, I’m not sure why we see so much of it today. It does not seem like good business to me?
John-NYBW,
We are a niche hobby in a very tiny marketplace. How many Macs have been sold? Millions? Billions? Compare that to a typical HO loco model of 3000 to 5000 units. It’s not fair to compare a high production consumer product by a zillion dollar company with a hand-made model train created by people who are not in this business to get rich. Almost all the employees in the USA that work in model railroading are model railroaders (with exceptions like Walthers, et al); they do this because they are hobbyists, not because they are looking to get stock options.
If the model railroading manufacturers would be held to the same standard as Apple, there would be no manufacturers. They’d all be out of business.
csxns,
Perhaps. But I will point out that Spring Mills is literally two guys in a model railroad club that put their own money into their product. When they come to Springfield every year, they have a woman making their boxes for them. I talked with her and she said she only works for them at the show; she’s a waitress at restaurant near the club they belong to and they hire her for that show only. The two guys are hobbyists that happen to import model trains, not the other way around.
Dave,
It still happens. I was personally pushing for G-85 TOFC’s from any manufacturer that would listen. I actually had one tell me they were going to go for it and to please send them all info I had on G-85’s. Less than 6 months later, just as design work was starting, Walthers announced they were making the G-85’s. The other company than canceled the project before it got too far. But if Walthers had waited another 6 months or so, we might have had two G-85’s on the market at the same time.
What exactly defines a limited market? Look at the F7. They have been making them for so many years one would think that anyone who wanted one would certainly have one by now. Yet it seems that every year a different manufacturer comes out with a new model.
Well, a pretty good working definition might be the market for the locomotive already overpromoted by Lionel et al. as the Torpedo, a one-off obsolescent Pacific in a dowdy clown suit, painted a color that even foremost PRR authorities have difficulty characterizing. At least if you had to do a one-off with a comparatively short time in streamlined form, 6100 was a better ‘torpedo’ than 3768, and easily more famous. Note that no other streamlined PRR steam locomotive, K4 or otherwise, shares any particular prospective tooling with a model 3768. It will be interesting to see which of these two is less incorrect, or if either is enough incorrect (at its respective price point) to see full demand – I do hope both of them will sell well, at least well enough.
And we still don’t have better grasp on the nose shape and detail not to invoke the old Intermountain comparison, or (to my knowledge) easy modular provision of all the different nitpicking ‘phase’ and model variants … let alone believable chicken wire. We were even treated to a recent ‘article’ that displayed near-terminal ignorance of how an actual F7 is put together (or more pointedly, would behave when taken apart); to my knowledge there is no F-unit model, dummy or otherwise, that models the carbody framing and structure accurately.
Now, is there a market for more accurate Fs along these lines? &
It’s one thing to build computers in a select, limited number of models. It would be something else if they came a much wider variety of physical forms, all with different paint schemes and upholstery along with maybe 40 different operating systems.
That’s still no excuse for announcing delivery dates until you are ready to start producing what you promise. If a company announces a delivery date of July 1, that should mean it is ready to start producing them today. That will give them five weeks to produce, package, and distribute them to the retail market. If they aren’t ready to do that, then they should just shut up. Three years time from an announced delivery date to the actual delivery date is ridiculous and there is no excuse for it.
I agree. I worked in the retail side of this business from 1970 thru 1980. Manufacturers like Athearn did not announce new product until the machines were actually making it.
And while there was some duplication, companies like Athearn and Roundhouse went after different segments of the market rather than compete directly on every item.