MDC 4-4-0...whom are we kidding?

Wolf:

I don't know if this is true or not. I know it's the way Model Consumer presents the state of the hobby, when they say 'a good-enough model railroad [in 2006] is operated by wireless DCC with sound', but that magazine is nothing more than platitudes strung together with ads any more, and doesn't IMHO represent the hobby like they did in the N. 7th St. days. I venture that this Usenet group is a better sample of the model railroad world. The kind of questions we get here and the reports occasionally posted about current projects all line up very well with what I have seen around town.

I'd also like to withdraw one remark I made. I looked through the pictures I have of late 1890s Baldwin locomotives, and the location of the Horizon-Roundhouse (oh geez, you can get 'Horhouse' from that) 4-4-0 brake parts is actually quite typical. Whoops. But the brake cylinders are WAY too small. The sandpipes are kind of a glaring omission too, as somebody mentioned. But as I said I wouldn't care about any of this if Horhouse wasn't trying to make a $220 RTR engine from a $70 kit engine. Down the Mantua road they go. The only question now is who buys the 'unprofitable' line in 5 years: Model Power or English [Bowser] ?

Cordially yours: Gerard P.

Reply to
pawlowsk002
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This MDC loco is truly a throughback to a much simpler time in the hobby and it's basic superstructure reflects 1960's technology and detailing, not today's. As others have pointed out, there are serious errors regarding detail parts or lack thereof. In total, it is really very basic and generic loco in need of considerable upgrading. The $225 price, DCC/sound or not, is not be justified. It's really in the same class with the older Mantua locos from 30 years ago. Mantua tried to charge very high prices for these too (lacking DCC or sound) and went out of business. I highly doubt Horizon understands the model railroading hobby and expect that, in the long run, they will make a mess of things for us all.

Wolf brings up an interesting point, unassociated with this MDC engine, regarding the hobby, that I've ruminated about for some time. I tend to agree that the future will see complete RTR layout sections or full layouts commonly offered to hobbyists by the manufacturers at really high prices (even small custom layouts today go for $15k and up, so a RTR product starting at $5k or so might do fairly well). But, taken together with the RTR engines & rolling stock, RTR structures, track, etc., is this model railroading at all?

To me, it's no more than being the owner of a collection of models or perhaps an exhibitor of same. In my book, this situation has nothing to do with modeling nor in making one a model railroader, any more than would a collection of paintings justify calling the owner an artist. Modeling, in any form, implies the hobbyist has craft skills or artistic ability. There are no such skills or abilities involved in simply collecting, displaying, or playing with, purchased items.

CNJ999

Reply to
CNJ999

For me the $200 question is: "How well does it run?" It's hard to take a highly detailed loco that runs like crap, and make it run well. It's a lot easier to detail a well-running loco to what you want it to be.

I expect to buy a couple of either MDC or Bachmann locos, -if- they run well (and haul a reasonable number of cars, included in my notion of 'run well'), and I'll probably sell off some of my brass to do it.

dave

Reply to
David Emery

highly detailed loco that runs like crap, and make it run well. It's a lot easier to detail a well-running loco to what you want it to be.

(and haul a reasonable number of cars, included in my notion of 'run well'), and I'll probably sell off some of my brass to do it.

Dave:

Very smoothly and quietly, if it is like the MDC 2-6-0 which I built from a kit, but is basically the same engine (the 4-4-0 was a factory version of a kitbash from the 2-6-0 which involved removing one driver set and adding a truck.) The drive on mine has a small flat ceramic-magnet motor with a little flywheel, and a worm with a double reduction gear train. I would imagine Horizon's are similar. My engine pulls about a dozen of my cranky and badly maintained cars, but it could probably use some added weight.

So the running qualities should be very good (This is not the Shay or the boxcab). And despite my earlier rant, I should be fair and say the /amount/ of detail is not bad -- 1896 engines looked quite clean -- but it's badly done detail. Oh well. I am not adding anything by going on like this. :)

Reply to
pawlowsk002

For $224.98 it better do my dishes AND clean the cat box! A 4-4-0 straight from the factory with a decoder might be worth $100 tops. This is like buying boating stuff. You put the word "marine" in front of it and the price immediately doubles.

Reply to
Big Rich Soprano

Naa he got it right...

Reply to
Big Rich Soprano

And for anything 'aviation' multiply by ten.....

Reply to
RWM

Eww... you poor people!

Reply to
Big Rich Soprano

I see this quoted over and over ad nauseam, but where is the factual basis for the claim?

Case in point: I went into a local hobby shop in Beaverton, OR. I was looking for wooden ties. I expected to find them because on a previous visit, I saw MicroScale rail spikes for sale. After looking for a while, I asked where the ties were. "Nope, we don't carry them". OK, how about loose rail? "Nope, don't carry it". Why carry the spikes? "I dunno". Boss-owner walks up. Employee asks him why they don't have the rail and ties. He says "nobody would buy that stuff". I ask did you EVER carry the ties and rail? "No", he says. When I pointed out how ridiculous that logic was and asked how he knew he couldn't sell them if he had never tried, plus why does he carry the spikes which can pretty much only be used with the rail and ties, he got all red in the face and asked if I wanted to order the ties. Behind him, his employee was about to burst from his need to laugh. I responded that the only 2 times I had ordered from his store the

*average* delivery time was 3 months and that wasn't going to happen again.

Point of the story: Many LHS are lousy business-people, haven't a clue, and take their cues from the distributors who have their own agendas. They make more on RTR, therefore that's "what people want". The real question is - which people? Customers or bean counters (who may not all count as "people" but we'll call them that to simplify things)?

I went downtown and the first store (Vic's) carried them but was out. He, on his own, called another store and found out they had them and gave me directions. Guess which stores I'll shop at from now on.

Reply to
Jim Sherman

Jim Sherman spake thus:

I'm glad you found them. But guess what proportion people like you (and me) are out of the general population? An insignificant fraction. Consider yourself lucky you can still find the bits and pieces you need to build stuff.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Again. Where is the research to prove your assertion? I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, just that I've never seen any actual, verifiable, research on the subject. It could just as well be an "urban myth" or, more likely, self serving disinformation put out by the distributors.

Consider grocery stores. Shelf space has squat to do with what sells, it has everything to do with discounts granted by the distributors to stores which sell only their brands. In many chain stores, you can't find half the brands that are available for just that reason. The distributor discount for playing along is a huge percentage of the profit from a grocery store. Their margins are paper thin. Only in rare cases can an "off brand" gain shelf space, usually due to customer demand.

We need to generate that customer demand.

Reply to
Jim Sherman

Ain't Tammies wonderful? Like you, I am on the westside, and Tammie's is at least close. But they have little in stock other than N scale ready to run, and their ordering practices have left me with three to six month waits for items.

I've found that Hobbysmith in the Hollywood District, and especially Bob's Whistle Stop out on SE 119th and Division are great for both stuff in stock and for quickly filling special orders.

Vic's is ok as well.

Probably not surprisingly, each of Vic's; Hobbysmith and Whistle Stop are "trains only" shops. Tammies,on the otherhand, is an "all hobbies" store. I wonder if they are as bad with non train stuff as they are with train stuff.

Reply to
Jim McLaughlin

Jim S - Your point is very well taken. I, too, would like to see, but never have, any verifiable figures that support the idea that people who still build things are an all but vanished breed. Fully half of the fellow hobbyists I know are into kitbashing or scratchbuilding. It is only the younger guys and those individuals that have entered the hobby in very recent years, that I observe are agog over everything RTR. Save for the latest locomotives, I'd have to say that a very high percentage of older, experienced, hobbyists are just as much into building things today as a generation ago.

The problem seems to be that the manufacturers have discovered that by appealing to newer, financially better off, hobbyists that lack the time and skills through offering everything RTR in limited runs, they can increase their profit margins to a much greater degree than ever before...at the cost of shutting out those who are truly modelers.

CNJ999

Reply to
CNJ999

I usually make a token pass by Tammie's just in case they accidentally have something useful, but it's been off to the Whistle Stop after that. After Hobbysmith moved, there's a lot more HO stuff but they're a bear to get to with the road destruction going on out Sandy and Vic's is closest after Tammie's. You're right about ordering at the Whistle Stop. They are indeed fast. Also a tad spendy, but if they can deliver, I guess that's worth something. Too bad they're that far away.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Sherman

How are those of us who like to build things shut out? Because MR has become "The RTR Shopper". Because the LHS doesn't stock rows and rows of shake the box kits anymore? How does a manufacturer shut out a guy who doesn't need or want manufactured RTR or instant kits anyway? Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Favinger

My sales figures, and the shelf-time of those bits and pieces. I've accumulated quite a collection of bits and pieces - they move slowly, slowly, slowly. I'll order anything you ask for, if you guarantee to take it off my hands - I've been burned too many times by people who just wanted to have a look at something.

You've got that backwards. The grocery chains demand the discounts. What's more, many chains are also distributors.

OK, how do you propose to do it? There's only kind of customer demand that I as a retailer understand: you ask me to stock it or you order it for, and you buy for it.

There's also the other side of the counter. Customers aren't all angels, and some of them are downright mean. Among retailers, stories are common of customers who have ordered an item,looked it over, said thanks but no thanks, and gone and ordered it from a discount mail-order shop or online. One guy told me of a former customer who came back and bragged about the deal he got....

Reply to
Wolf Kirchmeir

The problem is that manufacturers have found that they couldn't sell those wood kits (for example) that they sold a generation or two ago. Even the simple plastic car kit (Accurail, etc) is getting hard to sell: I'm assembling them and putting back on the shelf at 2x the price, and finding a better sale than for the kits. Better profit, and a bit of occupational therapy, too -- not bad! :-)

Kit and scratchbuilding is now a hobby within a hobby. When I started model railroading 50+ years ago, people built because they had to. People nowadays build because they like it. And they expect a much higher standard of kits and detail parts than were acceptable a generation or two ago.

Reply to
Wolf Kirchmeir

It certainly could only apply to the largest chains. Most grocery stores run on less than a 2% margin. You want shelf space and you're not Big Box Inc.? Better be ready to cough up something. Somewhere up the line, all the chains aren't distributors, they're customers. None of them actually produce their own stuff. I worked almost 27 years in the food industry and I know my company would run frequent promotional allowances to gain shelf space. The longer the government allows non-competitive practices to continue, the less choices you'll have.

Reply to
Jim Sherman

That's what I was saying.... I'll make it clearer: The distributors don't "grant discounts", the discounts are demanded by the chains. No discounts, no shelf space (strong local demand for certain items excepted.)

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Reply to
Wolf Kirchmeir

I said that the distributors (in effect) "bribe" the stores to gain shelf space. That results in the stores only carrying what the best "paying" distributor sells in order to be able to make a profit - BUT. It's controlled by the distributors who have a lock on the delivery process. In order to gain shelf space in this system, a manufacturer has to cough up promotional allowances to the distributors to gain shelf space, because the stores damn sure can't afford to do it and the manufacturers can't get directly to the stores. The exception is the coupon sale, but those can only work with the cooperation of the distributors OR if the manufacturer has its' own delivery system, such as a local company. If you have a consolidation in the number of distributors, then you lose brand choices and the distributors become the 800lb gorillas, dictating what is carried solely based on what maximizes their profit. When the distributors also own the manufacturing plants, you're really screwed.

Reply to
Jim Sherman

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