First, let me say I realize the quality and quantity of model railroad equipment out now is perhaps the best its ever been, in any scale.
That said, I still find myself doing a lot more looking and a way lot less buying at shops or train shows in the last 3 or 4 years. The reason — the proliferation of high-priced RTR. What I could once spend and get 3 or 4 cars, now gets me one, if I’m lucky, and if I can get over my distaste for just taking something out of the box and plopping it on the layout. Can’t call myself a model railroader if I do that.
I know all the reasons — better technology, cheap Chinese labor to add details, a lack of time to put kits together, growth of people more interested in just running trains, not building them. But where is that leaving those of us who enjoy the time spent putting even a simple Athearn or MDC kit together. Yes, I know a few of the RTR companies do make some kits that parallel their RTR offerings. But just try to find that stuff. Most shops and train show sellers don’t stock kits anymore. Maybe I’m the last person who rather buy a kit at $10 than RTR at $20? Putting kits together is relaxing after a stressful day at work. I don’t get that stress relief from popping open a box and plopping a car on the layout.
But what does that say of our hobby as a whole. What next, hiring people to build our layouts for us (Oops, I guess that already goes on, even though that is the most fun for me)? Are we headed down the path that only the ultra-rich will be able to afford nice equipment? It wasn’t long ago I could find a nice P2K loco discounted from $90-100 list to $50-60. Now they list at $150-200 and sell for $100. Heck, even P1Ks are $75 for the simplier drive and a lot less detail. Even Athearns, once at $35, are now $60, and well over $100 for the Genesis line.
There are some guys in our club who now fall all over themselves, and their checkbooks, trying to outspend each other on the highest priced, full-gadgeted RTR loco
Agreed.
It is the same with all other hobbies in the hobby shop.
RC cars ready to run Planes ready to fly. Even model rockets are assembled.
They are becoming glorified toy stores.
Steve
cmeastern; My sentiments exactly, in many cases it is a contest to see who has the most and newest stuff, but be very careful as people have replied to this very topic with it’s their right to do whatever they want with their money and you must be jealous(I have seen this reply many times)–it has something to do with “it’s a free country” This hobby was never for the poor and as we see now and in the future it’s going to be more for the wealthy, hopefully they keep selling off their old “stuff” so we can continue in the hobby. ebay has allowed many to purchase reasonably priced older kits for assembly. Also be wary of MR’s who complain that it it is not a rich mans hobby, just ask them what their budget is for the hobby, and don’t be surprised. My fun is in the assembly and modification of existing equipment—keep trainin’
One option is to order parts, such as ladders, strip wood or styrene, decals, etc. and scratchbuild your own. Once you build up an inventory, you can pick out a plan and build it.
LaBelle http://www.labellemodels.com/ has some kits.
You might want to attend some train shows and stock up on Athearn and MDC…
Enjoy
Paul
cmeastern, you aren’t the only kit builder, I don’t have anything RTR, from rolling stock to structures to trees to handlaying track. But maybe because of the time spent building I’ll never see or feel a complete run on my railroad, but I enjoyed building it.
Bowser
Accurail
Intermountain
Red Caboose
Tichy
Branchline
Westerfield
Sunshine
Funaro & Carmelengo
Sylvan
AMB
LaBelle
ECW
BCW
And a couple dozen more I can’t think of off the top of my head.
Hmm, even Athearn and Atlas still offer kits. Heck even Kadee offers kits!
Kits aren’t dead. Never have been, never will be. OK, so you can’t get a SD40-2 in kit form any more, but were the old Athearn’s REALLY “kits” (heck, is anything that takes five minutes to “build” really a kit?). Kits are still readily available. If your LHS doesn’t carry them any more, maybe that’s because he’s trying to put bread on the table, and is selling what moves.
I buy RTR. Heck, I haven’t bought a steam engine kit in years, and am selling off the ones I still have. I also buy kits, and have over 100 resin kits sitting around waiting to be built (I’ve built 20+). I also scratchbuild LOTS of structures (when was the last time you scratched 30 speeder in one day, and gave them out as gifts?). Who really cares WHAT I buy, so long as I’m enjoying the hobby?
And for all of you who complain about “the death of the kit”: when was the last time you built a power pack from scratch, or a caboose out of wood veneer business cards?
Its called a “I want it now” world we live in. There is a guy I know that stopped by my house to talk to me about MR. He loved my set up but asked me why I was building the buildings with kits? I talked to this guy for about 2 hours and he asked good questions and I answered them as best to my ability. He called me later on about a month later and contracted me to build a 3 car garage for him, so I built the garage for him, no expense was to much, nice siding, doors, extra spent on concrete and so on. Was an expensive project for him but he loved it. About 2 months later he called me and asked me to come over. He had a complete layout that was out of this world, it was really nice looking and detail like you would not believe. Seen his rolling stock it was all ready to run stuff, High dollar Broadway LTD engines a costom built council with the latest DCC and sound set up. The average MR dream come true. Here is the best part, he never lifted a finger for any of the work that was done, it was custom built and detailed by some company, all the cars and loco’s were weatherd, it was darn near perfect. He just sold everything off because he got bored with it and bought a 1964 Vet and a 1965 Mustang to put in the garage instead.
This guy lost interest really fast in the hobby, and ditched it in6 months. Thats the part of the RTR I do not like and thats the reason why. The comment the member made about people who want it now is fine for them, but kits keep the interest there I think. Besides you learn on how a loco and freight car are built, and it is great for the senses.
A LHS I use to go to would accomadate about anyone that walked in, it had lots of MR items and all the other Hobbies. I use to go there about 6 times a year and helped out at Christmas. He had all kinds of freight and loco kits and all the other fixings to build a layout. Last time I was there was about a year ago. All the kits were gone, and high dollar stuff replaced it, he would not even order the kits as per my request f
We had a small disscussion about this a while back. Anybody have an idea what can be done about it??
I enjoy putting them together, in fact I may get more pleasure from that than the rest of the hobby. I think we should look farther into it and petetion some manufacturers. What do you think??
Generally, if you want a kit, you will have to special order it. On my way home from work today I picked up another Athearn 57’ mechanical reefer that I ordered. There are kits out there, but you have to go looking for them. If you want to know what kits Athearn is producing, go to its website and look at the Blue Box production schedule.
cmeastern: I also agree with your observations. Kits, even simple ones, are getting harder to find. On my railroad, in the last 5 years, I’ve purchased 3 non-kit locomotives (all Bachmann Spectrum), as opposed to 7 kits just this year! All the kits except a Bowser USRA Pacific were purchased on eBay. MDC Steam kits are only obtainable on eBay, and Mantua kits are way overpriced retail.
Every building on the layout is a kit. It takes time to find the right one, but you can do it, with a little persistence. Even old Suydam and Alexander kits can be had at good prices, if you know what you’re after.
The biggest issue here has already been mentioned. Anybody who isn’t completely thumb-fingered can get a model out of a box and plunk it on some ready-laid track. OK - nice model, to be sure, but no satisfaction of “authorship”, even if the “authorship” is just putting together a kit designed by someone else. If you put it together, odds are it won’t look exactly like the next guy’s, so you can say, “I built that!” But just slapping it down can become pretty boring…
It’s still possible to get kits, though there aren’t nearly as many as there used to be. The saddest part is that so many folks are into instant gratification. No patience left anymore, it seems. It took me the better part of two weeks to get the Alexander coaling station built, but the satisfaction of seeing that big black monster towering over the engine yard is worth it, when I remember the “I Built It”.
What we older modelers need to to is encourage the newbies to try building some simple kits. There are some great kits out there - point them out and let the new guys in on the secret of what makes this a lifetime hobby, as well as being the World’s Greatest!
Things have changed but a lot has not. Back when I was a kid my dad and I built kits and scratch built things. My father did not spend huge amounts on the hobby and never talked about how expence things were but I heard a number of others complain about it. This was about 40 years ago. Some kits mostly locomotives were expencive for the times and brass was up there too. Turnouts with switch machines could take a big bite if you needed a bunch of them. Most of the other people we knew that had brass or scale trains were fairly well off. Most model railroads I remember featured HO RTR with snap track ( expanded trains sets), Lionel, Am Flyer or Tin Plate. The layouts all looked a lot a like due to the more limited supply of RTR. Seems like every one had RTR Warbonet F units. The market for RTR has always been there its just now being catered to much more. Some people back in the old days probably only built kits because there was no RTR option. Hobbies back then probably attracted more people that liked models and building them. Today the hobbies have expaned to include more people who like models but may not enjoy building them who are probably the majority. I never bought the “folks today have less time story”. My dad was a workaholic but still found time for his son and his trains. Bruce
What can be done about it isn’t going to happen… People refusing to pay the price. As long as folks are willing to pay for it, the manufacturers are going to pump it out, in little dribs and drabs called ‘limited runs’. The truely sad part about it is, the younger generation, who we need to get involved and perpetuate the hobby, cannot afford the high priced RTR stuff… I’d wager that most don’t have credit cards handy to order online either. So what are they left with?? Paper route money for several weeks and plunking down one or two RTR cars on the layout (if it’s true LHS’s are reluctant to carry lower priced kits)… ‘Gee. Wasn’t That Exciting!?!’ … ‘not’… ‘Where’s the playstation contoller?’…
I’m not going to get into a RTR vs Kit fight here, I think there’s room for both… After assembling 100s of rolling stock kits, Athearn, MDC, P2K, Intermountain, Red Caboose, Ambroid, Labelle, etc, I’m bored with it anymore… I find scratch building more relaxing and the end result is much more pleasing to me… Right now, I’m scratch building my track… Getting ready to build a turntable and kitbash a round house…
I know it happens all the time in business but I think the worse thing that has happened in recent years of the hobby is all the mergers and buyouts. It may have been necassary to keep the brands alive, I don’t know… All I know for sure is that lack of a lower priced entry into the hobby is going to put a serious damper on the future of it. I know that when I was a teen, if I had to pay the equivilant of $30 (now) for a train car, my interests would have gone elsewhere. What
For all the head-in-the-sand folks who say there are plenty of kits:
Go try and buy one of the P2K non-“Timesaver” kits. They don’t make them anymore. You can get these cars as RTR for $30 from Walthers, or as “Timesavers,” where much of the assembly is already done, for $17. You can’t get the full kit, which used to cost about $9, anymore.
Yeah, fine, it’s only one manufacturer. But they’re just the example I’m using - there are others. I mention P2K kits because they were well positioned between the molded-on detail of “shake the box” kits like Accurail (of which I have a lot - I’m not dissing them), and the “one-step-up-from-raw-ore” kits like Tichy (I own some of them, too). The P2K kits took a few evenings to assemble (at least, the more complex ones like the tank cars did) and were very detailed. If I could still buy them I would have shelves full (anybody wanna sell some unbuilt P2K kits?[:D]). But the profit on a $9 kit is probably much lower than on a $17 partially-assembled kit (thanks to dirt-cheap labor), and certainly is less than a $30 RTR product. For those who want the RTR stuff and.or the partially-assembled kits, that’s great, but for those of us who like the completely unassembled kits, why is our segment of the model railroad community being ignored by some manufacturers?
I have so little rolling stock that I can buy just about any kit and be happy. I haven’t gotten any locomotive kits because right now i don’t have the time or skill to do them properly, hopefully later. All my structures are kits and i hope to do some scratch built buildings this winter.
What sells is stocked, and yes, you may need to go the extra distance to find the kits in the state you want them. As the market drives the hobby, we can’t insist people only do it “our” way, we can only continue to point out the satisfaction of doing it yourself. I do agree that attention spans or patience is shorter these days and i agree that instant fufillment is a big deal, but we just need to continue to spread the word about the hobby and stick together to support the people who do continue to make kits. [2c]J.R.