Too high priced to have mistakes?

Everything should be made perfect. There should be no mistakes. No matter if its a traditional item or a premier item.

Andrew, I generally agree with your observations but I think you are mistaken that price is a factor when it comes to mistakes.

In other areas of human mass production lives are lost when mistakes are made. In our little world of choo-choo trains, weather its a 10.00 dollar flat car, or a 500.00 brass car, there have been and will be mistakes. Nobody wants to produce an item with mistakes, but it does and will happen.

Charlie

I know it is not life or death to the hobbyist, but the product will sit unsold for much longer in the model railroad train store if it turns out wrong.

The model railroad store owner does not want to have that much inventory in stock all the time do they? Would they not be losing money if they can not sell the high priced cars in a year?

Andrew

I'm not knocking your thinking here Andrew. But there are some other considerations.

For example, on the Lehigh Valley railroad, the Cornell Red color was all over the place in shade and intensity depending on when the locomotive was built and painted.

For other railroads that may have been more consistent in their paint stocks, you still have normal color changes that took place over age. Then one has to consider that if the manufacturer's are basing their paint decisions upon actual photographs, there can be quite a bit of variance there too, depending on the type of film, the processing of the film and prints - and the light conditions of when the photograph was taken. 

I've read where the train companies have done research to get actual paint samples from the product they are attempting to produce. But I would imagine this sort of effort also adds cost to the product.

Finally, for us, the consumer, the rises in train prices have been pretty dramatic over the past decade. But this is also a reflection of the increasing production costs. From the consumer view, the $40 train car from a decade ago to the current $90 cost is not the same thing. We expect much more for the increased cost.

Yet from the manufacturer viewpoint, that $40 train car is the same $90 train car... albeit with the added unfortunate production costs. And development / tooling costs for brand new items. Still, the price increases, however necessary from the manufacturing end, are still a shock to many train consumers.

Granted, there have been some products made that are just wrong. The Lionel Norfolk Southern waffle box car from a couple years ago or the current BNSF one are good examples. But these are traditional line products, and I guess that side of the market is a little more forgiving. Or simply likes the brighter colors as with the Lionel BNSF waffle box car.

The train companies are partly to blame here too: They've promised more realism and accuracy, and therefore consumers have come to expect that. Especially the high end scale consumers. There is now an expectation level of the products that will be hard to reverse. But the same could be said for the prices of these products... they're going to be hard to reverse.

Now some might counter, what about Menards? Well, Menards is a home improvement chain that happens to be making trains on the side. Their bread and butter comes from the home improvement retail revenues. And still, you read complaints about the accuracy of Menards products - which are a bargain in comparison, a fact which cannot be lost to the other train makers.

But I don't think anyone would be happy if Lionel and MTH decided to go into the retail chain store business, making their train business a side line to their main source of revenue. They could probably lower prices. But they would also be making far fewer trains.

Andrew, I'm sure the train companies want to please their customers. If they're reading the forum here, they're very aware of what pleases and displeases their customers. But we train consumers wanted more, and the train companies went overseas to lower costs so they could spend the money on new tooling and product development... which they have done. But now the factory is across the ocean and is a contractor for the train companies: A totally different arrangement from when they had their own production facilities.

It all reminds me of the old saying, you can't please everyone... which sure seems to have become the new motto of this century old 3-rail train hobby.

I go along with Andrew and Jim.

My poor experience, which I had with a particular company, who usually produces great representations of prototype locomotives and freight cars, recently produced items which had the wrong type doors, door sizes and doorway sizes, which were different from the company's color stock photos. and the same prototype freight cars, which to me seemed to be a bait and switch.  

Also, photos. of the actual freight cars show particular 'Built' and 'Repacked' dates similar as modeled on the 1:48 scale size cars, with the wrong doors, etc., even though these were the companies mid. range items, with mid. range prices, the scale models still should have been representative of the prototype, as this company's past products of the same mid range type item and mid. range prices, were produced either spot on, or near spot on.

Who knows who manufactured these WRONG DOOR 1:48 scale size models, for this particular company.  

I told a company representative of the doors on these newer products, as compared to their older products, which he took into consideration without any excuses.

In this company's 2015 catalog, another new type of mid. range, mid. priced box car has wrong doors, with wrong door sizes.

I ate this loss, but these inaccuracies are is going to cause customers to return such items and both the hobby shop and the company will be overstocked and gain a poor reputation.

That's my TWO CENTS!

RIGHT, WRONG AND INDIFFERENT!
Ralph

If you watched Eric's trains video on his loco collection, MTH used a wrong shade of blue for his CSX Genset engine, so he weathered it. Maybe weathering the item might help and you would not notice the error.

I don't care if I paid $10 or $10,000 for something; the company that made it should be able to get the shade of the paint correct. If you're going to bother to make it in the first place, make it as accurate as you can, otherwise, what's the point of making a model of a real object in the first place?

What I would like to see done with companies is more true to model for the proto-typical engines to be modelled. To be more specific I want a diesel engine model of a GP-38 or other diesel engine to be made in real life and not in a roadname that the company wants to sell. Also what burns me up is the mass production of N5c cabooses(one company makes only N5c cabooses), how many railroads really used the N5c caboose?

I am not a rivot counter, but at least "get the correct model made correctly!"

Lee Fritz

I'm a stickler for details. A lot of this stuff has errors. I look before I leap especially at these prices. The sad part is there is tons of info out there for the manufacturers to get it right, but they don't research their products enough.

Another mistake made by one company is the production of Norfolk Southern Heritage diesels using SD-90's instead of SD-70's. Their claim is that it really don't matter as these are just toy trains.

At least Lionel & MTH got the models correct on the diesel engines for NS.

A little FYI on Reading diesels; the Reading used GP-7's, GP-30's, GP-35's and GP-39-2's. They also had SD-45 diesels and some C-630 diesels and a some FM Trainmaster diesels.

There were other diesels the reading used but I can't think of them right now.

Lee Fritz

For example lets compare 40' ice reefers in the PFE and Santa Fe markings. Atlas, Lionel, and MTH.... how many different shades can there really be, and which one is actually right?  but yet they still sell out, every time they are released with new road numbers.

Prototypical fidelity kinda goes the way of the dodo for me every time I see that 3rd rail.

Anyway, it's how I keep things in perspective, though it would help if general accuracies were kept, such as paint scheme.

--Greg

Variations cost money.

"Perfection" (mythical, anyway) costs money.

This leads to a whole other thread about price increases.

Better is always better, but good enough gets things done. The "non-perfection" around us can go, for me, from irrelevant to unacceptable. The situations that really annoy me are the ones where a model is offered with some incorrect attributes that would have cost nothing to get right, or, at least, better. They can't offer every variation of every piece of rolling stock or even locomotives (especially steam) at prices anyone could pay (see above) or production schedules anyone would tolerate ("Due in 10 years! Just wait!"). Plausible substitutes are fine; reasonability is paramount.

Some of use might want to try a little actual modeling to get a desired piece. Skills can be learned. (This also teaches you humility and tolerance - rare attributes these days.)

Exactly:

Rusty

Excuse me while I wax nostalgic.

Remember, Full refund if not fully satisfied?

Forget it!

Bruce

I agree with Charlie but I would like to add https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO4wcNVbYOQ  Nick

I'm not as upset with the color shade thing that many above are suggesting (unless it was the totally wrong color maybe), and I'm not going to get upset if detail "x" is 1 millimeter off from where it should be on the prototype.

However, I would appreciate if they could have someone with a command of the English language do a spell check and/or confirmation using Google, Wikipedia, etc to make sure things are spelled right before they make paint masks/name plates/decals/artwork, etc.

I don't own the "Merrmac" steamer or the "Nortern" (hopper, I believe), but I am the not so proud owner of the "Huck Fin" version of the Pioneer Zephyr.  (I know, I should have refused it - violated my own rule since I liked the set otherwise)

-Dave

Yeah, but why even bother at all, then? It'd be so easy to have the locos and cars as unpainted, plain styrene or metal boxes on running gear...

But that 3rd rail... yeah, I can't say in a way you don't have a point. That's why I only ever modeled in 2-rail.

Dont forget the recent 86ft auto parts boxcars.  Somebody posted on how the NS heralds were really incorrect style on those $94.99 (msrp) models.

No matter what they sell things for, mistakes will still be made from time to time.