In a recent topic (I cannot find now) some posters were bemoaning the lack of undecorated rolling stock and/or locomotives on store shelves nowadays.
Just so happens I was on the phone with my favorite train store manager today, and actually inquired about getting a BLI painted but unlettered Y-6B. He was quick to inform me that he never orders such an animal for regular stock anymore because virtually nobody wants to bother lettering a painted model like that, let alone painting a real undecorated model.
In his opinion, undecorated is the kiss of death–they just die on the store shelves. I’m passing this along to those who have stated the manufacturers are missing some kind of huge market for undecorated or unlettered models. That market, that perhaps formerly existed in some other decade, is most certainly on the wane today–if not just plain gone.
He did say he’d be glad to get an unlettered one for me from BLI if I wish to go there. I think it’s wonderful that a few manufacturers still provide a few unlettered steam engines for those of us who might want to letter our own–but the market for such items is most certainly limited.
No one wants to do any kind of physical work on them anymore—
It is kind of sad that we have reached this point wherein because the RTR is so highly detailed and complete-that we now do not feel any inclination to do that stuff . We either do not feel that we can do that or we just donwanna—who knows what the reason is
Just gotta do the scrounge thing—and hope beyond hope that someone somewhere will deign to be kind enough to allow a few to dribble out—
Well, I understand the point, but this isn’t really a good example to go by.
A steam engine that was only owned by one railroad generally isn’t going to have too much call for undecorated ones - either you model the N&W and want one lettered N&W, or you don’t want one at all. Steam tended to be unique to that particular railroad - except for USRA designs and copies which were used by many different railroads. You can buy an undec GP-7 and letter it for dozens of different railroads that had the real things. Very few people would want to buy a UP Big Boy undec and letter it for some other railroad.
Plus, I think the problem I hear most often discussed re undecorated is with the lack of cars, freight and passenger. With Roundhouse and Athearn dropping undecorated kits, there’s a pretty big gap especially for steam / early diesel era modellers. For example, I chose the Roundhouse 3-window wood caboose as my free-lance road’s “standard caboose”. Well, now you can’t get them undec or as kits. I also bought quite a few of the old MDC/Roundhouse Upper Michigan ore cars. Not as well detailed as the Walthers ones, but the undecs were only about $4.50 each.
This is why I get undec Atlas RS-3’s for cheap - everyone is too lazy. Kato drive Atlas for $20 on eBay. In my case, the entire body shell gets one single color - I don’t even need an airbrush for that, nor do I have to do any masking. It’s really no harder than painting the weights for Athearn and Stewart hoppers black - oh yeah it seems no one does that either, then when you look at the end of the car you see the shiny and/or rusty steel. This instant gratification mentality is so frustrating, it drives up the prices and limits the selection. And opening boxes isn’t much of hobby. But what can you do, it’s what sells so it’s what gets made. If more people bought the kits they’d still make them.
I understand not wanting to do physical work on some of today’s steam engines. I like tinkering with things, and some of those steam engines are practically impossible to disassemble without breaking something![:O]
I guess that was not one of the shops I have spread around about $10,000 to in the last few years, since I buy lots of undecorated and/or painted-unlettered equipment.
The recent “Friday” thing was about the future of the hobby, I avoided that thread because my first reaction was “which hobby”.
Buying and collecting expensive model toys or building a model railroad?
This thread, and the one I did comment in on the cost of RTR rolling stock, are just more signs of an ever deeping divide between “railroad modelers” and “model train collectors”, regardless of scale, prototype or price range.
I love undec models for several reasons: 1. as you said they die on the shells so you can snag them for cheap off an online store 2. I model a freelanced RR so that saves me the trouble of stripping the shell I love painting my rolling stock and locos, airbrushing can be really relaxing. It’s a shame to see these going the way of the dodo bird; I like RTR because the stuff gets up and running, but I also like the feeling of building a kit and saying “hey, I built that!”
Additionally, I think Stix hit the nail on the head with his comments.
I have no use for an unlettered Big Boy.
When I do buy an unlettered N&W class A I swap the tender to give it the look of my freelanced ATLANTIC CENTRAL.
The ATLANTIC CENTRAL has over 120 pieces of motive power - vertually all purchased undecorated or unlettered. F units, GP’s, PA’s, FA’s boring real life work-a-day steam like 4-6-0’s, 2-8-2’s, 4-6-2’s, 4-8-2’s and 2-8-0’s, 2-8-8-2’s, 2-6-6-2’s and a 2-6-6-4, a 2-6-6-6 and two flashy 4-8-4’s.
Not ot mention hundreds of freight and passenger cars.
And, I model some other roads, C&O, B&O, WM. The selection of pr
Well, yes, the Y-6B is indeed a poor example. However, my friend made it clear that he avoids buying anything undecorated for his store anymore–not just iconic locomotives like Y-6B’s.
I’m not trying to slam those who still build/kitbash/paint/letter their own; I’m only reporting the state of the current sales “reality” here in our part of Central PA.
I’m also not saying they don’t get some undecorateds–because they do–if a specific customer requests undecorated–just not for regular store stock. (This particular store also has a national internet and mail order presence.)
Yes, few would letter a Big Boy for some other road. I like the southwest, and am contemplating lettering an articulated for NdeM–because it’s my railroad, even though I said before I wouldn’t letter a fictional roadname on a big iconic articulated. However, the reality is that although cleared to run the entire distance to Los Angeles, the Big Boys never did. Their actual operating territory became somewhat limited, for various reasons. In fact, the more I study railroad history, the more facts like that I learn–facts that sometimes get in the way of what I myself or others might have wished things to be.
Unfortunately, if I like certain scenic regions of the U.S., and I like certain articulateds, I’ll have to cheat to put them together. The one shining exception being that Union Pacific Challengers in UP paint did indeed end up on nearly every southwestern railroad at one time or another–but that was just not the typical pattern of operations.
NdeM actually received 8 thoroughly modern standard gauge 2-6-6-2’s, that some folks referred to as “baby challengers”. Since so many other American steamers migrated south of the border, I can pretend
I dont so much want to see undec engines, but rather lettered with no road number. I hate having to strip just the numberboards and remove or “doctor” the factory road number to have more than one or more than what the factory supplied for road numbers. Every run should have the option of lettered but with no road numbers. Some companies do this, but many dont. I am also one of the minority models that loves to tinker and hates RTR stuff. At the fall train shows I stock up on wood craftsman kits, old Sydam building kits ect. Keeps me busy during the cold months of the year. I avoid newer production locmotives for the most part, sticking with older Athearn blue box diesels, PFM and Tenshodo brass steamers and a few Alco models brass diesels that I have reworked to run quite well. While I love the newer Athearn diesels, the super fragile hand rails are a major turn off. They look great, but unless you are putting them on the layout or a display case to never hardly be handled, they are to easily broken, espicaly the end railings. My models get transported from my layout to the local club layout and home again. Athearn metal rails and brass rails on my brass diesels fare far better than this new scale width plastic stuff that almost breaks from looking at it. I do like having the option for undec models. The local shop is basicly the same way, if you want an undec, preorder it, or like most anything in todays limited runs you have to preorder if you want one at all. Cheers Mike
I don’t think Athearn or P2K make enough undec kits, and I went nuts looking for Genesis and Kato. IM doesn’t offer many. Some of us are able to paint, letter and detail as good as an RTR and we used to save $$ doing so. As for the unlettered but decorated ones, I have Genesis and Atlas engines with no #'s and now I have to shell out $6 just to number them with the correct decals (if available) so that was a dumb idea. There’s always stripping , painting, detailing and re-motoring the toys from our youth!!!
Undec market demand waning? Guys, you could email the Yahoo forum groups that model railroads like the SCL, L&N, ACL, SAL, Flordia East Coast, Central of Georgia, The Clinchfield, RF&P, and several others.
It is very likely that a lot of these good folks will tell you that they buy painted models of such & such locomotive, freight car, or passenger car, and go through the aggravation of having to paint strip the units just so they can paint and decal them in one of the above-mentioned road names.
I’ve posted articles on this forum of models I’ve paint stripped (E-unit shells and passenger cars). While I was glad to share my experience, I hope no one thinks that I actually ENJOYED going through that hassle. [sigh]
I’m not sure if it’s a few hundred or over 1,000 modelers that regularly strip and paint models but if the question is if there is a market (large or small) for undecorated HO and N models then the answeR is ABSOLUTELY YES[;)]
y’know it may just be that some people just don wanna do that work of decorating the locomotives or rolling stock themselves. I’m thinking that this is just another fine example of why those of you who do do the decorating yourselves just haveta put up with no undec’s and gotta work hard doing that stuff.
[|(]
I do think though that this whole scenario is part of the ideology of the restrictive market—instead of growing a market we restrict what the buyer can have for a choice—[:-^]
Well not saying I agree completely and I can’t say this goes for all manufacturers but in the case of a Y3 that was purchased by my wife for me as a Christmas gift they come not only undecorated but a great many of the detail parts need to be installed as well. A few friends suggested I just send it back or sell it to buy a decorated model but after know what great pains she and the guys at MB Klein went through to make sure that I had that locomotive by Christmas morning I could never sell it. It will get done as I am never in a rush to do anything with my railroad it’s jsut a hobby and I enjoy it too much to stress over little things like that.
Now when it comes to rolling stock, I’ll take all the undecorated stuff I can find. I like to letter up things with my railroad’s name etc. my decaling skills are improving and after I weather the snot out of my stuff it looks really great…lol. If i I were given a choice of a good quality piece of rolling stock or locomotive undecorated versus a lesser quality decorated piece I would most definitely opt for the undecorated.piece. Strictly speaking for myself form follows function. You can always make a high quality piece of equipment look that way you want but you can never improve the quality of a decorated piece of junk to equal that of the high quality piece.
I have only 4 points of anecdotal evidence to offer:
Look at the number of threads in this forum complaining about the lack of offerings in a particular road name.
Brass locos that are factory painted command(ed) a price premium at the LHS - and still do today as used locomotives.
Blackstone unlettered RTR HOn3 freight cars (the few that are made) sell out far faster than either the lettered or weathered variety, based on observations at my several LHS. I got lucky - I own one BS flat car, and that’s because it could fit my era without major modification, and the LHS had a painted, unlettered model. The remainder of my HOn3 rolling stock is kits, as there was precious little interchange in the 3ft world. The cars must mostly all be painted and lettered for my fictional home road to be plausible.
My two Micro-Trains RTR HOn3 cars were bought for layout testing (before I had kits built) and to display (collector in me) after the testing phase. They are wrong for my era.
draw what conclusions you will
Fred W
…modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it’s always 1900…
Stix wrote:You can buy an undec GP-7 and letter it for dozens of different railroads that had the real things.
If it was only that simple…Even the plain jane GP7 details varied from road to road and could vary from unit to unit especially after shopping…Now add the difference between the phase 1 and phase 2…Sigh.
However,if one isn’t overly concern about such details yeah,he could paint 'em as he will.
Several years ago, one of the major hobby retailers stocked painted but unlettered Athearn box cars. I went through dozens of them and wish I could get some more. Cleaning up after a decalling project is nothing like cleaning up one’s airbrush.
I also ordered some painted but unlettered wooden reefers for my home brew decals. I’ve gone through about 75 of the 100 I got. Many of them are on my roster but several have been given to friends. But I know what the shop owner was saying. We often think that how we individually approach the hobby is the way everyone else does; that’s simply not the case.
I guess most people here have a lot more time on their hands than I do. And I don’t even have kids! Between home chores, family visits and work, I have very little time to play, I’m sorry, operate my trains. Maybe if I was introduced to this hobby when I was still in school, or even college - I would bother with kit bashing and decorating myself. But now all I have time for is to install grab irons, populate passenger cars, and program locomotives to run and sound right. Other than that, I can’t imagine building locomotive from scratch or even lettering from scratch.
First, I’m not sure I can make it look as good as factory precision applied pain job. I don’t like to see outline of the decal - much rather prefer crisp lettering from the factory. But even more importantly, even if I had the skill, I simply don’t have time. Maybe when I retire long time from now. But as it stands, I’m grateful that a large variety of locomotives and rolling stock exists with great paint job and DCC/Sound installed and I have a chance to play with them given the little time I have for hobbies.
