How do the Menards RTR buildings compare to Woodland Scenics offerings in terms of quality, detail and street price?
I am afraid I am not up to date on pricing in the US, but I didn´t think Menard´s prices were cheap.
Menards O buildings are nice, better than MTH’s plastic buildings, but not as nice as Woodland Scenics. Menards prices are lower than WS. I don’t have any HO scale buildings, but I suspect they are similar.
Keep in mind that Menards O buildings and freight cars are aimed at the 3 rail market so they tend to be small. That said, some of them would be okay on a 2 rail scale layout. Others could be used with S scale if you remove the people and vehicles.
Paul
[tup] This guy get the gold star! There is something for everyone and and different pieces fill different needs.
Enzoamps
I hear a lot of “I wouldn’t buy it, so it shouldn;t exist.” We can build something from scratch, or buy a nice building from Walthers. Sure. Now imagine you are a young dad with a five year old kid. You go to Menards for a couple 2x4s and see the trains. 60 some years ago, my dad bought me a Lionel 027 set. He put a spare bedroom door on sawhorses, added a strip along one side to widen it. It was a panel door, with the raised cross parts and panels depressed inside. We had a basic squared oval with a siding. The door raised parts were “streets”. I had a couple shiny Plasticville structures. We had one of those Lionel self reversing “line cars”. The train was a steam loco, a caboose, and a few freight cars. I was in hog heaven, it was the coolest thing.
http://www.tandem-associates.com/lionel/lionel_trains_50_gang_car.htm
If we never had that, I likely would never have gone on to HO and followed the hobby. Not prototypical, not accurate, but fun. That young dad at Menards, he never heard of Walthers, has no idea what kitbashing might be, but knows his kid would like a train set. In 1954, I didn’t care about how that Plasticville stuff looked, and today, a 7 year old won;t care what Menards power plant looks like. It looks like a big factory…to him.
Why would someone buy these toys when they could buy an expensvie scale model? Why does anyone eat at McDonalds or Dennys when there are nice upscale restaurants selling chef food? There is a market for both.
&nbs
Have they put MTH or Lionel out of business yet? Im going to go ahead and say, no they have not.
Also Im pretty confident that Menards isn’t a government of a country or a terrorist organization, so they wont be dropping any bombs on anyone…
So when and if Menards runs HO scale rolling stock, I expect the established HO scale manufacturers to do exactly nothing.
I’ve been following this thread and I’ll add my expensive comment to it. I bought the HO scale American Power & Light in HO scale from Menards. Yes, with the shipping it cost me about $80. Why did I buy it? It looked neat, lit up, and would fit in the area I intended to have a small power plant. Space was a little issue for me. I’ve used DPM parts to make buildings and was going to buy the Powerhouse Plant kit (I did and will use it elsewhere). I placed it on the layout, wired it in, and it’s very impressive. Is it prototypical? I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ve had my train buddies over and they were impressed with it. If you add some other details to the area, it will fit in just fine. My layout is fairly modern and it works. I only light it up when I have guest who want to see the trains run, so I plug it in. During my operating sessions, its another industry that needs to be switched.
Every modeler has their likes and dislikes. That’s what SHOULD make the hobby enjoyable and fun. There are modelers who have great talent, and I wish I had similar talents, and the time to do it. I don’t. So for me, that Menards building works just fine. As far as their diecast. I bought one of their cranes and for the price, it’s a nice addition. Plus, when I bought it, they threw in the Lionel Christmas Tree balls, which I donated to a friends tree.
The hobby should be fun for all at any level. I commend Enzoamps who wrote about his dad and the trains. Doesn’t get any better than that!
Neal
And let me make it clear to all, I have no real opinion about the quality, value or usefulness of any model train products being offered by Menards, my only issue was with the suggestion that somehow Menards would have some measureable effect on the hobby or the industry - as per the thread title and the comments of the OP.
Sheldon
…for agreeing with you that soon you and he will be able to chuckle over Woodland Scenics, Walthers, Branchline, Blair Line, etc going out of business? Sorry, I’m just not there. Maybe later.
Well, all I can say is, to each his own. I, for one, am not into already-built structures because they don’t often fit the piece of real estate that I have for it, eithter space-wise or geometrically, or both, so it would mean modification, which is hard to do with a built-up structure. For the beginner, yes, I would say that these are great additions to that “Christmas tree train set”. With all the bells and whistles that they have, I think they are a great inspiration for a kid that may spark a love for the hobby in them.
As for me, I’ve got plenty of unbuilt kits that I originally planned to put in a spot on my layout, but decided to build that planned structure from scratch instead. Right now, out of approximately a dozen structures that are so far planned for my small switching layout, I have exactly two that are kit-built. The rest are already built from scratch or are going to be, with the exception of a small kit-built depot that I plan to modify and detail. I have to say that, without a doubt, the scratch-built ones are the most rewarding to me as a modeler. Additionally, no one else has structures like these on their layouts.
Menards stores are, as a rule, very large and they sell lots of different stuff. They even sell some clothes and food. Their lumber department offers homasote among other good things. I see no evidence that Menards is prepared to devote either the resources or the shelf space to being a dominating player in the model train market, much less trying to undercut everybody on price.
They did have more train stuff before Christmas in their toy section, including some scenery items, and some of their own 0-27 freight cars looked reasonably priced with good paint jobs. The after Christmas pricing was a good discount but apart from that this is not what I’d call a cheap line of train stuff. (They do have bag sales with a discount for anything you can fit into a paper sack – that leaves out the train sets.)
They continue to make the tubular track that Lionel itself is discontinuing. The O structures are impressive in size (even if they are closer to S scale in size), and among the HO structures, I thought the two story frame house looked like a nice model for pre-fab that could find a place on any layout’s era or locale. They do somewhat resemble the Woodland Scenics built up structures, but also remind me of the Ertl HO line of years back. But Menards is really just dabbling in O-27 and HO and seems content with that niche. It does seem like they intend to have trains on the shelves year round unlike what department and some hardware stores did when I was a kid.
I would advise O and S scalers in particular but also HO scalers, who live near a Menards store to check out what Menards has, particularly around Christmas and particularly during their bag sales. If what they have exposes more folks to model trains or makes more kids say they want trains for Christmas, I’d say that is a positive development, and for
I agree with Dave, all the way. I just came back from my local Menards, and while I was there, I took a close look at the power station mentioned in this thread. It actually is a great representation for what it is, a stand alone diesel genset, that you would see at a hospital, office building, or manufacturing facilities, to use for emergency / standby power. Actually the building could even be a little smaller, and it would be more prototypical.
There is a nicely detailed Cat diesel with a generator inside, that looks really good.
The Cummins Filtration facility and office facility in Stoughton, WI. has something just like this in their front yard, with glass all around, so you can see what one of these gensets looks like. Something that not many people get to see.
Mike.
I have no issue with Menards and I would use the Woodland Scenics buildings. In fact I have the illuminated movie theatre waiting to be installed once I remove an orange grove…if I like a premade building I will use it.
That sounds like it was a great purchase. I have looked at a couple of the Menards buildings now, thanks to this thread, and I have to admit that I see some possibilities there.
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-Kevin
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Than quit making it so dog-gone tempting to pick a personal gripe.
Calling us “elitist” bec
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JEREMY CENTANNI
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JEREMY CENTANNI
richhotrain
JEREMY CENTANNI
Some of the comments here have come off as sounding elitist about who is in what market.
You mean like pontificating from a high dudgeon?
Hardly, some people just don’t like honesty.
…
Oh, so WE’RE the ones who are all out of step. We just needed you to tell us.
M’kkaaayyy…thanks for that.
No, but people sure make it seem that way… I know lots of folks who don’t visit here for the same reason.
Instead of picking personal gripes, contribute to the
I guess I’d better add my 2 cents before this thread in shut down. Menards doesn’t exist here in western Colorado. A year ago we traveled back to Ohio for a family members funeral. I saw several Menards along I-70 but didn’t have time to stop and check out their train department. The pre-built buildings they offer don’t interest me. Photos in the reviews I have read weren’t impressive. An impulsive purchase of one might draw a new hobbiest into the hobby, although I feel the price point is a little steep for an “impulse” buy. The line is selling, but in the 70’s five and dime stores sold lots of crappy Tyco starter sets. I’m sure they resulted in newcomers to the hobby, but I’m also sure many were also discouraged by the poor quality and performance.
I started with Tyco trains. I had a lot of fun with them. They ran great.
Paul
I have a couple of the HO built-ups from Menards. They give you two choices (the side & the bottom of the base) for power input, so the option of a hidden connection is there if the MRR so desires.
It’s ironic that this: “This guy get the gold star! There is something for everyone and and different pieces fill different needs.” undoes him.
He says he’s going to gloat when the support for Blair Line and FSM dies because so many will jump at the chance to buy Menards’ stuff. Why he would want to gloat is beyond me, but that’s his business and passion…I guess. It’s moot because, as many have attempted to reassure him, he’s wrong.
To explain the irony, his original statement suggests that there are thousands just waiting for a Menards to come along so they can dump their loyalty to those other producers, those greedy wretches to whom we are all indebted at present. Inherent in the philosophy is that Menards should carry the lion’s share of the loyalty for providing these pre-built items at a reasonable price. In other words, his preference ought to be lauded and supported simply because it’s his preference in HO structures. Then he contradicts himself with the quote above.
Which is it to be? Both his assertions can’t be right since he has couched them to be mutually exclusive. [:-,]
I’m going to put a very fine point on this, my last post, to this thread (for which I’d guess he’ll be grateful…): I don’t like being told my taste in the hobby is wrong because it doesn’t match an OP’s. As his undoing and self-contradictory quote makes clear, there IS room in this hobby, including for the Menards and their supporters as well as for Blair Line and FSM and Branchline. Had he just stated as much, and not bounced in his chair waiting to chuckle…well…'nuff said about that.
I’m still trying to figure out why they’re going to “drop the bomb” when Model Power kits are $15 to $20 for virtually identical buildings and can be built by any ten year old.