Yesterday I stopped by one of the the LHS in my area looking for some model paint for my caboose project. “Caboose Red” in fact. Unable to locate the display, I asked the propritor where was the model RR paint. The answer was; “We don’t stock paint any more, because so many of our customers are going ready-to-run”. I was then led to a cardboard tray on a shelf with about 20-30 bottles of old paint in it, of course no Caboose Red…
time to find a new LHS
[sigh]
ernie
I go to Hobby Lobby to get my model paints.
I’d say it’s a sign of the times. Everyone today seems to want instant gratification and can’t wait, and the art of scratchbuilding is slowly dying. LHSs stock what sells and have to adapt to customer demands or go out of business.
Five or six hobby shops within reasonable commuting distance of me have gone out of business in recent years because they couldn’t compete with the Internet on their pricing and stockage. The nearest one to me now is 80 miles away, and with gasoline prices being what they are I only go there if I happen to be in Tucson for some other reason.
The LHSes that I visit all still seem to have a good selection of paints. That particular store must not see much demand, but I don’t think it’s true throughout the hobby.
Still, RTR has had a bigger market than kits as long as I can remember. I personally believe that TT scale in America would still hold a reasonable share of the model railroad market if American TT scale manufacturers had marketed RTR products like the Europeans instead of giving up when people stopped buying their kits in favor of RTR N scale products from Germany and later Japan.
Best!
I guess my point is that sooner or later it becomes a self-fufilling prophecy. If all the hobby shops adopt this principle of “we don’t sell anything but R-T-R”, then of course scratchbuilding will die off. Or hobby shops…
Ernie,
Can’t find paint? Just go to any LHS that caters to wargamers and you’ll find everything you need. If the LHS leans toward the RPG folks, you may find “Snot Green” instead of “Signal Green”, but the color will still be what you want. They often carry Floquil and Polly Scale, too.
Today’s high end models in RTR or kit have pretty much killed off the custom painting market. This has had a negative effect on all the products associated with it, including detail parts, undec. models, decals, and paint.
Likewise, I’m sure that:
1). DCC sales have negatively effected DC throttlepack sales.
2). Code 83 track has negatively effected Code 100 sales.
3). The internet has negatively effected magazine sales.
Stuff happens, and the hobby changes. It used to be that one had to be a machinist and turn your own wheels, wind your own motor cores, and cast your own parts in lead. Plastic was derided as something that “real” model railroaders didn’t use, that only wood and metal models were appreciated.
Fortunately, one can still get paint, detail parts, decals and undec. models, but one may have to order it online or through the mail. One benefit these days is that one can order decals and paint direct from the factory.
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
While this may be the case among those who are entry-level, or who largely just dabble in the hobby, it is most definitely not the case among the more serious hobbyists. Look in on any of the more advanced forums and you will see a continous stream of unique, custom painted/custom built (i.e. scratchbuilt), models illustrated in posts by a high percentage of forum members. The one thing that I have found, is that the Internet has created a highly distorted preception of just what is and is not common, or mainstream practice, in the hobby, simply because the various forums have tended to seperate themselves into the newbies, the more average hobbyists and the truly serious and accomplished ones - each group becoming isolated from the others. Perusing some forums gives one the impression that the majority of hobbyists are George Sellios-types, while others suggest we mainly have 4x8 plywood pacifics.
Certainly, undec cars/locos, maybe even paint, is becoming harder to find in LHS but these items never sold in huge quantities at any time in the hobby’s history. It was always a bottle here and a couple there on a given visit. Same with undec cars and locos. On the other hand, most hobby shops aren’t doing any land office business in sales these day, so they will naturally cut their stock of items that move slowly, replacing them with higher priced/larger margin RTR items salable to those who never learned how to paint, decal, or scratchbuild. It’s only good business sense but not a clear sign that any of these activities is vanishing, or even have changed significantly.
CNJ831
Paint is frequently necessary to complete kits. I recall one Sierra West structure which listed about 20+ different paint colors in the “tools” section of the instructions. I think I bought nearly $60 on paint for that kit alone, but only because I already had some of the colors on hand. If I had none, the paint cost would have been around $100.
Mark
Sounds like my LHS, which is light on trains (and mostly RTR) but has half an aisle of paints and finishing products for the war gamers, the aircraft builders and the model auto customizers. I’ve even found matches for some obscure shades used by my prototype - labeled as Imperial Japanese Army camoflage (fillintheblank).
If your hobby shop has discontinued model railroad paint, go down another aisle and see what he still has. If he’s gotten out of the paint business completely, find another shop - he won’t be around much longer.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with war-gamer paint)
Just to clarify a point, I did get the paint I wanted from another local LHS that caters to the MRR crowd. I was simply astonished that this one shop, which does carry a lot of MRR otherwise, would elect not to carry such a basic commodity. What’s next? “Sorry, we don’t have glue, we don’t sell kits anymore.” or “Exacto blades? Whaddya think this is, a harware store?”
I was in a LHS last year that did not even have Kadee #5 couplers! They did have the ‘whisker’ couplers(the #5’s are too hard to assemble…). I suppose Xacto #11 blades will be next…
Jim
In all fairness, a lhs here really did his best to cater to the “modelers” and he nearly went under mainly due to the economy and low sales. It seemed that the guys who “modeled” didn’t buy as much as the RTR guys who came in and would spend more. He even started internet sales and moved stock that sat unsold for years. Actually, he was even giving away the last 20 or so bottles of Polly Scale to make way for newer merchandise by giving a bottle away to anyone who bought anything.
RTR is more expensive that kits and you can get better prices on kits, but if people are willing to pay RTR prices, then the maufacturers,lhs and online vendors are more than willing to cater to the market request. I too agree it is sad as it takes away a majority of the modeling in railroading and leaves us with a manufacturers idea of what a model should look like.
Folks:
This was not supposed to be a huge essay.
Casting our own parts from lead and winding motor cores? It’s been a loooong time since that. Something like 80 years or more. Sometimes people did build motors, but it was usually for economy, not because motors couldn’t be bought, except in the very early days. To be honest, the typical scenario would be “adding cardboard braces to our Lionel tinplate stockcars”.
Henry Ford had a quote I try to remember from time to time. “Don’t find fault; find a remedy”. Before I started on this forum, I would have thought there was little interest in building stuff, but now I have a harder time believing that. There seems to be a huge amount of interest in kits and scratchbuilding, and I think we’re seeing an increase now. But if scratchbuilding really is losing popularity, any one person can fix that. Go build something. Then there’s at least one builder. And if you show it off here you are guaranteed to generate interest, from what I’ve seen.
One problem the LHS owner didn’t mention is that the intertubes have all sorts of hobby retailers that carry pretty much everything, and the main disadvantages are $hipping charge$, waiting, and the fact that mail ordering is now and has always been a PITA with communications that are painful at best, and none of those are likely to change. I think this is enough to provide a LHS a good fighting chance.
Unfortunately, the “building material department” of some LHSs consists of a rack of overspecialized detail parts somebody ordered and ditched, some dusty bottles of Floquil that may or may not be hardened fully through, and a couple racks of styrene and stripwood with all the common sizes bought out. Ask when it will be restocked, and maybe you’ll be told that nobody wants to buy scratchbuilding supplies…not surprising, considering the garage-
Go to a different store.
Armour and aircraft modellers build and paint their models. That is all those hobbies are about – no wiring, no operations.
And there is a lot of paint available. And it’s always easy to mix to get the shade you need.
‘STOCK’ IS MONEY. All stores stock what $ells; and PAINT disributors want shelf space.
YOU want what you want - when you want it, but mail order is $7 shipping plus the item, and dealers have minimum order requirements, + shipping + city & State taxes.
The trick is finding a store that stocks the items you want at a price you are willing to pay.
Good luck, sincerely.
True enough, Don, and since many of us in the hobby these days want whatever-it-is right now (yesterday would have been nice), we can save oodles of time and the gas money with 10 minutes of etail outlet surfing online. We pay most of the saved gas money in shipping charges, but the item is often cheaper than at a LHS anyway, and actually in stock in most cases. For some, the drive to an LHS is expensive, if potentially as immediately gratifying as the order with the click of a mouse, while the downside to the etailer shopping is having to wait for a few days, near two weeks in my case.
I enjoy reading the various expressions of perspective on this forum. I know we have several highly skilled and experienced modellers who have built many fine crafts, and I hope to dabble to a healthy extent in that regard by the time I TX. Right now, I have two kits to assemble, and I find myself procrastinating. I think I need some examples of how folks are building things in photo essays like Simon’s excellent version just a few days back.
-Crandell
I think it is a sign of the times…If you noticed, MRR did away with thier “Paint Shop” dept. also. Probably for the same reason. Hobby Shops have to be highly competitive & can’t use up valuable shelf space on things that don’t turn around quickly & can go bad. On the other hand there will always be scratchbuilders, either because they can’t find what they want in RTR, or can’t afford them. In most cases it’s cheaper to buy RTR than scratch build considering the price of paint. If you need 4 colors it could run $20.
It’s not just the market that affects paint availability and sales… I can’t remember which state, probably California or some other “progressive” place, makes hobby dealers obtain a separate license to sell paints with solvents because apparently it’s their fault if some nitwit punk takes himself out of the gene pool by “huffing” paint fumes…
Personally, I like the WM’s black paint scheme because I can buy all the paint I need in a giant spray can for $.97 at Wally World… Likewise Oxide Red primer for hoppers etc.
Lee