Would you spend an extra $100.00

I don’t necessarily equated cost to quality. I look at the manufacturers reputation with past products, and if it applies, my past experiences with the product. If it is a good product with a good reputation, cost is not the deciding factor. I am comfortable (call me niave) purchasing a product from a reputable company and assuming they will stand behind the product. I work in manufacturing, I understand that it is now a world ecomomy, parts for our products come from all over the world, neither directly or through our vendors. When I see “Made in USA” or “Made in anywhere” I take that with a grain of salt, The sub assemblies and components could be made in 5 different countries, but assembled in Iowa. Does that make in “Made in the USA”?. IMHO its more of a feel good slogan than reality.

Bottom Line , if I need a 4-6-0 steamer, and Toy Loco company makes a nicely detailed, smooth running loco, with a good reputation, I will buy it at $100.00 or $500.00, doesn’t matter.

Brent;

I believe you get what you pay for, bottom line. If two like items are say, $100.00 and the other $500.00, it doesn’t always mean that the higher priced item is better…the $400.00 difference might be just a brand name.

What I am thinking about is the failure rate of finished product. It can be an expensive or inexpensive loco. If assembly is not done with care with proper end of line testing because that involves more labour cost I would pay more knowing I have bought a product that has a 1 in 5000 failure rate rather than a 1 in 20. These days some of our engines seem to have the latter.

A friend of mine moved his product manufacturing from Canada to Asia. It was the only way he could compete with his electronic widget. He is now on his third manufacturer over there. His shipped failure rate went from 1 in 5000 in Canada to 1 in 20 when he first got to Asia. He is now back up to about 1 in 1000 failure rate but it is a tough struggle. Problems he had were as soon as he would leave the plant, end line testing went from turning item on and testing 8 functions, to just turning the gadget on and off and shipping it out the door. This saved time and thus more money for the manufacturer. The other big problem was if an employee was making mistakes they were instantly shown the door and someone else was given there spot on the line often making the same mistakes. My friend convinced the plant owner to let him hold a company meeting to explain why things must be done certain ways and let him correct employees who were making mistakes instead of throwing them out the door. This made for instant improvement in the failure rate. His competition for one product sells for $89.00 and he meets that price with better quality. The cost of dealing with returned faulty product is huge and taking this into account it lowers the made in Canada price considerably. He would still have to sell for $115.00 if made in Canada. End result is most people will buy the $89.00 widget rather than his $115.00 one that is likely to be less of a headache all around.[sigh]

I might.

But I would also like to see improved availability (no more limited runs).

I would like to there to be a parts inventory available to my LHS or my internet dealer.

I guess in short, a return to the Athearn blue box business model…

I know it is not going to happen, but you asked…

Quality is an idea that no longer has the cache it once had-----it is the cash, man. They will buy garbage if it means that it costs less. Profits go up, cost goes down at expense of an idea no longer relevant.[sigh]

The only way around this is by asking friend why go through all the added expense of re-educating a whole number of nameless workers in another country, travel there

The question you asked hits close to home for me, since I like quality model trains. The problem is real quality is not just a hundred dollars more, but more like one to two thousand more. I know that sounds like a lot and it is, but try purchasing one of the Division Point NP Z8’s and you will get qualilty and more. It does not have sound, but it is one of the best models I have purchased up to now.

We keep hearing about all of the gear box problems with BLI and Bachmann and maybe a high quality gear box would add only twenty more dollars to a model locomotive, but they just don’t put the quality into them like you want and probably never will. Many of the modelers in the past purchased brass models since they were the only ones available. About ten years ago, when BLI and Trix and a few others started to offer steam that ran good and then began to offer on board sound installed, we all purchased the die cast and plastic because they were less money and looked very good overall. Certainly they are not detailed

Brent,

I have yet to spend $100 on ANY of my locomotives, and that includes the price of upgrades and DCC decoders. No way would I spend $100 more!

A lot of that comes down to design. People who prefer Hondas and Toyotas have no problems with the ones made in the US. It’s the engineering philosophy of the company. An Atlas engine built in China will be better than a Model Power engine made in the US (I know, I know, they’re made in China too).

As for the idea of the “pride in your work” ethic, that went out the window when people started looking down on blue collar jobs and decided the only way to be successful was to climb some meaningless corporate ladder.

This, combined with your quoting Pathfinder, reminded me of an odd nugget I picked up in a college class on globalization a few years back. Some of it may not be entirely accurate:

Nissan designs, develops, and tests the F-Alpha platform in Southern California. Its used to develop American styled pickups and SUVs for the US market, by American designers. That frame is selected to become the Nissan Titan, which is assembled in Canton Mississippi. Its parts are drawn from industrialized nations all over the world. However, 35% or more of the parts are manufactured in Japan. In theory, 34% of the parts could be American origin. This makes it a Japanese truck, because 1830 pounds of the truck were made in Japan and as much as 1779 pounds could be American. Does 51 pounds more, a whole 1%, really make a difference as to “country of origin?” If you go down to Lowe’s to build a wooden box, and that plywood comes from anywhere other than the US its country of origin is not the United States if you apply the legal country of origin definition to it.

There are 2 reasons for the present practice of making model locomotives in China. The 1st is the cost of semi-skilled assembly labor; the second is the cost and availablity of the very skilled labor to cut the dies needed for plastic and die-cast production. The die cutting expertise is not as available in the U.S. as it once was, and is very expensive when you do find it. Hence, the lack of new U.S. plastic and die cast production, with Kadee/Micro Trains and Bowser being the glaring counter-examples. But none of the counter-examples manufacture all-new tooling locomotives in the US, either. Lionel had to finally give up and go to China/Korea for its new tooling production in the late 1990s because they were getting their lunches eaten by MTH.

Instead of plastic and die cast with its very steep up-front investment costs, the model railroading cottage manufacturers in the US (and Britain) have turned to other technologies. Etched metal,