I have been in this hobby for a few years now and have noticed that many manufacturers have delayed their new products releases later than what they initially announce. I have noticed that some manufacturers have more delays than others.
For example, I have pre-ordered six Intermountain reefer cars decorated in BNSF. They were supposed to be released on January 31. Now (according to Walthers) they should be released on October 31. I can probably assume that Walthers could possibly be wrong on this annoucement.
I am not bashing Intermountain or any other companies but just observing. I know that just about everything is made overseas these days. I have been seeing this more and more and have to wonder. Doesn’t the company’s managers try to correct this?
BLI has delayed quite a few production runs over the past three or four years. Their Mohawk was very slow getting into users’ hands (just ask Job Stage…er, I mean Tom Stage). Their Drefus streamlined Hudson is still not in production. The UP 9000 engine was to have been delivered just prior to Christmas if I recall, but I don’t think we’ll see it before July/Aug, and maybe as much as a year yet if pre-orders have been slowing.
Fortunately, I got an email this morning from Factory Direct Trains that they are about to ship my Pennsy Q2, and that is only four months late. [:P] Not bad, really. And meanwhile, I am pleased to see, they have sold oodles of successive runs of the 2-10-0 and their very popular Y6b.
As most of the stuff is now being manufactured in China, it is no wonder, that importers cannot meet the announced delivery dates. The Chinese certainly are not the world´s champions when it comes to meet agreed deadlines or schedules, and quality issues also may cause delays. I´d rather wait a few months, than having a loco which is plagued with quality issues.
Crandell - I hope to see some pictures of your Q2 in here, once it arrives!
Are they really delayed release dates or overly optimistic dates to begin with. I’ve seen some cases in G scale where a product is announced by Bachmann on a “reserve” order basis and then is never produced because they apparently didn’t generate enough orders.
Some other importers seem to be using the same tactic – announce a product to build up pre-orders before even going into production to see how much interest there really is and how many they should produce.
It is asking alot to expect someone to take time out from a busy day of putting melamine in the food supply and churn out some scale models for us.
And things happen, as the saying goes. Someone told me that a major manufacturer of scenic detail items lost almost a full year’s supply when a container fell off a ship in the middle of the ocean.