Folks:
We seem to be getting lost in another debate comparing the theoretical 'Fifties Dark Age' (when the savages crouched in their darksome holes, gluing toothpicks together with Lepage's glue) with the nebulous 'Modern Golden Age' (when we have all the happy plastic diesels and happy limited runs and are really happy yeah!) and falling into comparisons between wages earned stacking boxes in 1959 and the current salary of a nuclear physicist...
SO...
At the risk of injecting actual analysis into a speculative discussion, and displacing all the fun out onto the ground, I went back to my
2002 MR (which I was reading on the john, BTW) and compared a few prices in the Standard Hobby Supply ad with their current offerings.
Here is what I find (all HO):
Bachmann Daylight 4-8-4 WAS 59.99 - NOW 65.58 ... 9% increase. Bachmann 4-8-2 WAS 98.99 - NOW 119.99 ... 21% increase. Kadee No. 5 couplers: WAS 1.59 - NOW 1.99 ... 25% increase. Athearn SD40-2 WAS 33.99 - NOW 43.99 ... 29% increase.* Atlas NS flex code 100, 3' WAS 1.75 - NOW 2.19 ... 25% increase. Atlas No. 4 LH Customline WAS 6.29 - NOW 9.99 ... 59% increase. MRC Prodigy DCC WAS 123.99 - Now 119.99 ... 3% decrease.
- This is no doubt leftover stock, as mail-order Athearn has seemingly disappeared over the Horizon.
Now, the oddballs here are the Daylight, the Atlas turnout, and the DCC. The first is probably very old, long-paid-for tooling. The DCC follows the rule of consumer electronics that the longer an electronic device is on the market, the more disposable it becomes and therefore the less reliable and repairable it needs to be. What? That's not the rule? Oh. Well, the big shock is the Atlas turnout. I reeeeally don't see what happened here, considering they were American made in 2002 and now aren't, and furthermore, the throw bars are now fragile, snap-on affairs, so you would think there would be some cost savings, no? Projected savings from offshoring not quite in line with reality, hmmm? Heh heh.
The other 4 items average about 7.3% cost increase per year over the last 3 years. Well, at the moment I think the inflation rate is about 4.6%, and in recent years it has been lower. It does seem, then, that Dan Merkel is quite right...at least as far as my extremely limited survey goes.
What we need, I think, is another Irv Athearn. Do you know why the wee fragile detail parts were left for the modeler to install on his virtually RTR diesels? I would venture that with the fiddliness of these parts and their risk of breakage (and subsequent need for inspection and possible replacement of defective goods) the cost of assembling them might add $10 to the locomotive at retail - and remember, the F7 was about $22 in the year 1995. Have you ever noticed the total lack of screws in the old Athearn drives? It made them cheap to assemble and kept the price low. Let's hear it for designing down to a price!
Cordially yours, Gerard P.