Why Don't More "O" Gaugers Build Kit's?

Holy Smoke, Don.
I was just discussing this with a gentleman who builds incredible O scale structures. I bought a piece from him that is amazing. I know it would take me four or five weeks of steady work to replicate it even if I was experienced.

I have so much scenery to do I have chosen the "find a great craftsman" route.
I do have some great kits to complete, but they will have to wait for a while.

Pics to follow.

Eliot

Don, the heyday of scratch built modeling was when I was a kid, partly because it was way cheaper than 'ready to run or roll' products. My dad made a complete village for his OO gauge Lionel train, complete with Water tank and power house which hid the rheostat. I think that a*s time is scarcer than it was then and we do live in the age of instant gratification. Also a lot of men these days don't seem to be as comfortable around tools as they were years ago as is evidenced by all the REALLY BASIC questions that get posted here. I guess their dads didn't teach them how to work with their hands the way we were. I think that if there were still a BIG demand for scratch building kits Walthers and others would still list them in their catalogues.

I agree about some of the basic questions sometimes.

There is a wide variety of layouts in O from green painted tabletop to Hi Rail. While even the simplest HO or N layout is more scale like. Not that many people have the room for a big layout. I haven't reached the scenery phase yet but mine will have miminal buildings mostly because of room but also I like countryside scenes more than city scenes.
O is 4 times the area of HO. A building that occupies a 3 x 5 space in HO for 15 sq. inches, will occupy 6 x 10 for 60 sq. inches in O

quote:

Originally posted by scale rail:

Maybe an old story but just noticed Bar Mills stopped making "O" scale kits.

When did that happen?? There are a large number of O kits on the Bar Mills website.

Everything old is new again!!! I very much prefer kits.....and with so few available I make my own! I bought a number of the Lionel main street buildings which I completely dis-assemble, rework, paint and put back together! I hate pre-built structures that will be on everyone elses layout EXACTLY the same as mine.

Why so few building?? Time? Skill? Easier to buy a box, pull it out and pop it down on the layout? I'd like more kits...but see myself scratchbuilding more and more.

If your older and retired or close to retirement it comes down to time, eye sight and many other factors. My hands are not steady anymore to build kits as is my eye sight which is not as sharp as years ago. But i still enjoy my hirail layout. The pre-built buildings or custom built buildings will be the way to go for allot of us.

Dave

Harry, what site are you looking at? The only thing I see is O scale detail. Don

quote:

Originally posted by scale rail:
Harry, what site are you looking at? The only thing I see is O scale detail. Don

I've built many of these kits and am planning to do more, which is why this took me by surprise. These are the ones I've done that are still listed on their site:

Shipyard Brewing

Bud Smiley's Texaco

Earl's Oil

Saulena's Tavern

Wicked Wandas

Buster's Barber Shop

I plan on building this one, which is a relatively new release:

Sweaty Betty's

And there are many more O Scale Kits on their site.

Harry, thanks so much for the correction. For some reason the site I was looking at only showed Ho & N gauge. Glad I was wrong about this. Don

Things are just so easy these days, so many prebuilt structures and trains in the US. Kit building of everything including locos and rolling stock is still big in the UK and here in Australia. My club has been scratch building trains and structures for over 50 years and they still do. Our club layout, which is quite large and impressive features all hand made track and switches, apart from a new Scaletrax loop.

Here's a model of a Seaboard Air Line Section Master's house I built (from plans in a Mainline Modeler magazine) a while back:



It's O-scale and HUGE! I have a couple of those Bachmann Snap-Together Cape Cod house kits and they're about 1/2 the size of this house.

I'm currently building a Vanderbilt tender from scratch and every line I draw or cut I make I have to take off my bifocals to do it. This old age mess is for the birds (of course it's better the the alternative).

It's not just O scale, it's all the scales.

There are many reasons why people build less kits these days.

True story:

I was a teenager hanging out in my LHS when a gentleman came in asking to buy a Manuta/Tyco 2-6-2 for the princely sum of $27.00. (This is WAAAAY back when.)

I turned to my freind and snickered, "Boy, he's waisting his money, he could buy the kit for 12 bucks!"

The gentleman overheard me, turned and said, "Son, some people don't have the time to build kits!"

I was stunned, the LHS owner smiled and validated the statment after the gentleman left the store. I still didn't quite understand it at the time.

Now I do. I've got several kit "projects" languishing on my bench for several years now. I poke at them from time to time, but I have less time and even less inclination to work on them.

There are several reasons for this, but one reason is for the past decade, Ive been spending 40 hours a week sitting at a workbench trying to convince electrons to go where I need them to go, not where they want to go. So sitting at my work bench at home is hardly a relaxing diversion.

Rusty

some 2 rail train kits can be used for 3 rail

I agree with you, Don. I feel that building kits is part of layout building. My major worry with the decreased availability of kits is that it will be harder to kitbash custom buildings.

Peter

My railroad isn't far enough along for me to be making kits yet, but to me kit building is just as enjoyable as all the other aspects of modeling. I've built quite a few HO kits, rolling stock and structures, starting back in the bronze age. Like watching the trains run, it's a zen thang.

Pete

Advancing age and bad vision allows me to enjoy O scale but kits will have to be taken very carefully these days. I think I have one or two to be built but that's it.

Most of my efforts that comes close to kit work is modifying or bashing an item to fit.

To be honest, the RTR stuff in buildings look pretty good, just needs a bit of paint and weathering among other things. They come out way better than if I tried to build them myself. (And I have quite a bit of experience in HO building buildings even if it is only Cornerstone and Modulars.)

The third item is consideration for the Chemicals. I am not a teenager who can withstand working the old Toluene orange tube for hours building a model anymore. That stuff fills the home and wife turns on the stove and rest is history.

I really enjoy kit building myself. Yes it takes a more time than dropping on readymade structure, and I do have many of those. To me kits are really the only way aside from scratch building, and I have done a few of those, that you can get almost anything but small city/big tow structures, and like 4 or 5 businesses of any kind.

Cost, time and patience are issues. At my age, I want plug and play!

Age! Shaky hands, reduced motor skills and, as noted previously, diminished eyesight are factors with many of us. The fun and pride of building simply does not exist to the extent it did years back. Sub-standard assembly and finishing or even poor basic weathering is not comfortable, and frustration can replace fun!
I also notice that many far younger, experienced and very adept folks at building increasingly respond that they are too busy making a living to take on jobs. I am happy to see that Woodland Scenic's Build & Ready structures are available and affordable for those desiring very good work. That in no way reduces the ability of the scratch and kit-building pros from from continuing and expanding their excellent work. Just observe the Scenery Forum and weekly photos on the general Forums, some of the best I have ever seen.

When it takes two hands to guide/insert a screw driver into the screw head it is time to follow a differnt path .

For me, there are two issues - time and quality. My time for building things is currently occupied with "scratchbuilding" a layout, plus making some furniture for the house, plus the occasional item for the toy train museum. The other problem is quality. There are lots of really nice building kits on the market - but my layout is not yet to the stage where I'm thinking about buildings. I do like to build rolling stock kits. I built a lot of kits when I was a kid, including several of the Ambroid "One of 5000" kits in HO. A lot of the kits you can get in 0 these days are old All-Nation, etc. items with graphics and detail that were excellent in their time, but have long since been overtaken by Atlas, etc. with ready to run plastic items. There really isn't a lot out there in high-quality 0 gauge rolling stock kits. You can get some nice body molds for the Milwaukee Road ribside boxcars, and somebody is making some decent old-fashioned wooden cars, and LaBelle still makes some freight and passenger cars, but all in all it's pretty slim pickings.

Buildings take up a lot of room if built to scale The section house in one of the preceding offerings is not a large house but when built to scale will take up a lot of room on a small layout. That is a nice job of modeling.
I started to build a model of my house in an over 55 community.The house was 30 x 30 with a twenty foot wide garage.This works out to about 7 " x 12 1/2". The houses are about 15 feet apart.another 4 inches So just 3 of these in a model neighborhood would be about 3 feet wide.This is the reason for selective compression unless you have a lot of space

For some of us, building is a financial necessity, as well as being fun. In fact, we have to be even more resourceful and scratch build many structures.

Not questioning the pricing of good O scale kits....I appreciate what it takes to produce them. But, prices in the hundreds per building just don't fit in my modeling budget. Scratch building with simple materials is a necessity.

For example, my entire skyscraper city was built for about the price of a pair of Atlas reefers.

Jim

Why Don't More "O" Gaugeers Build Kit's?

The hobby majority is dominated by traditional 3 railers compared to O gauge 2r/3r/3rs modelers?
Most are satisfied with the traditional approach rather than completely modeling in true 1/4 ‘scale?
Unfortunately the population in this scale will always be divided due to such diversity.
Kit suppliers from the past have gone out of business because ¼” scale is a smaller market compared to the big train picture.

Suppliers generally produce and market items based on the projected numbers.
I would think the older generation of Craftsman constructing freight cars and building kits in O is also dwindling.
New production advancements now make items more economical to produce.

It’s the modeler’s choice to either make it themselves or spend the money on a ready made item.
The fast paced society today is focused more toward quick and easy RTR items.
I would expect to see a shift of fewer kits and more built-up’s being produced to cover the need.

I think that its a lack of time and a matter of priorities.

I'm an example. I've built a number of buildings on my layout, and there is nothing I enjoy more than scratchbuilding something. But recently I had a project and just did not have the time. I bought all three of the new Woodland Scenics built up buildings in order to fill in a city block I needed to complete. I bashed them just a bit (moved details around, added more detailed interiors, etc., but it saved me a lot of time.

I think a lot of people (at least on this forum) have the skills, but like me are not retired and have to ration their time to a lot of things they would like to do with a layout. I want to have time to run trains and work on other things and so I simply bought three buildings to complete a block of my downtown so I could get on with things.

I think this is the case in many, many layouts.

For me it has to do with my approach to Ogauge.

They joy for me is creating layout designs, and the building of the layout itself...bench work, track assembly, and especially wiring, making custom connectors, and such.

I am a model builder, but not in trains. I always have a car, plane, or boat I'm building in various scales, that have nothing to do at all with my train hobby.

I guess it's all about at what point does someone enter the hobby.
When I started in N scale everything was a kit or scratch built just like a lot of you guys, course you guys had a lot of operating accessories in O scale that we didn't have.

From day one in the other scales, you have two choices. A fully sceniced layout or a flat piece of plywood painted green. There are no carpet centrals or toy train layouts it's either sceniced or not. If it's the later someone has to do it and so you develop skills over a period of time .

I remember when the only N scale building suppliers were Pola,Life-Like and Atlas and none of them were very good so if you wanted better you had to do it yourself. That wasn't a very big deal cause you were doing the rest of it yourself anyway.

I guess it's what your used to but I love to scratch build . I love to say "I did that" A scratch built building built by someone who knows what they're doing will always look better than a kit (A guy called Vulcan comes to mind)

Some will justify not building stuff because they say they don't have the time or the skills but someone had to build that layout of yours , building the bench work and laying the track, unless you have a Jennie in a bottle so you had time for that?

I guess when you enter the hobby at a point in your life when you have extra money it's easier to open your wallet and have this done or that. But to me someone posting a pic and saying I had so and so do this for me , I look at that pic and think to myself .That guy did a nice job and I hope you didn't get writers cramp making out the check cause that's the only part you played in it.

David

quote:

Originally posted by DPC:
Some will justify not building stuff because they say they don't have the time or the skills but someone had to build that layout of yours , building the bench work and laying the track, unless you have a Jennie in a bottle so you had time for that?

David

I've been in the hobby for over 45 years. I used to get my kicks redetailing locomotives, particularly Rivarrossi HO steam locomotives during the 1980's. Used to do some scratchbuilding and also modifed quite a few kits, stucture and otherwise. One of my pride and joys back then was a junker brass PFM Santa Fe 4-6-4 that I repaired, replaced missing parts and painted.

I started building my current layout when I a field service guy and wasn't tied to a workbench for 40 hours a week. As I've said before, sitting at my bench at work after all day has lessened the appeal of sitting at my bench at home building and/or modifying kits.

I still do some building/modifying/painting, but it happens on a glacial time scale.

So, before you get too critial of us folks that don't build kits willy-nilly, walk a mile in their shoes.

Rusty

I just bought a 1987 Lionel Grain Elevator Kit, unopened. That a kit would still be unbuilt after 25 years may explain why you're not seeing these kits in your 2012 Lionel catalog. As with the recent release of the Coaling Tower and Engine House, if Lionel released this Grain Elevator as RTR, it would probably sell.

To us, kits are fun. The manufacturers however, are not in this to have fun. Their job is to be profitable. If RTR is more profitable than kits, well that's what I'd expect to be seeing available for sale.

Gilly

There are many modeling craftsmen out their waiting for a model railroader to ask them to create a kit or build up a building. I found a retired cabinet maker in Southern Oregon who does just that. He created my Alamo and Temple, Santa Fe Station I have on my Texas layout as well as other structures in my Longhorn western town. The biggest problem is finding and connecting with these craftsmen. They don't always hang out on model railroad forums.

TEX
Steve

quote:

Originally posted by Gilly@N&W:
I just bought a 1987 Lionel Grain Elevator Kit, unopened. That a kit would still be unbuilt after 25 years may explain why you're not seeing these kits in your 2012 Lionel catalog...
Gilly

I disagree. Unless you bought the kit from a retailer, someone originally bought it and never got around to building it for whatever reason.

I have dozens of unopened kits--some far more than 25 years old. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most of us who enjoy kit building have many kits waiting to be built.

quote:

Originally posted by scale rail:
Harry, thanks so much for the correction. For some reason the site I was looking at only showed Ho & N gauge. Glad I was wrong about this. Don

I received an email from Bar Mills this morning stating they are introducing a new kit in O at the end of this month.

quote:

Originally posted by Rusty Traque:

quote:

Originally posted by DPC:
Some will justify not building stuff because they say they don't have the time or the skills but someone had to build that layout of yours , building the bench work and laying the track, unless you have a Jennie in a bottle so you had time for that?

David

I've been in the hobby for over 45 years. I used to get my kicks redetailing locomotives, particularly Rivarrossi HO steam locomotives during the 1980's. Used to do some scratchbuilding and also modifed quite a few kits, stucture and otherwise. One of my pride and joys back then was a junker brass PFM Santa Fe 4-6-4 that I repaired, replaced missing parts and painted.

I started building my current layout when I a field service guy and wasn't tied to a workbench for 40 hours a week. As I've said before, sitting at my bench at work after all day has lessened the appeal of sitting at my bench at home building and/or modifying kits.

I still do some building/modifying/painting, but it happens on a glacial time scale.

So, before you get too critial of us folks that don't build kits willy-nilly, walk a mile in their shoes.

Rusty

Rusty,

I agree and don't agree if that makes any sense LOL.

I just recently joined the 'More time than I know what to do with ranks"
But before that it was overtime once or twice a week and ON Call one week out of every month .During my on call week it was not uncommon for me to go to work at 7 in the mourning and get off work at 7 the Next mourning and I did that at least 3 times that week on call. A 24 hour work day at the power company is just one of things you get used to.My worst year or best if your my wife, I worked 1600 hours overtime.

But during all that time,the trains never went anywhere . Every time I had time they were just as I left them .It's the nice thing about this hobby.
It was always relaxing to come home, get some much needed sleep and then sit down and get my mind off of car hit poles and police reports or what guy on the crew needed this or that.It helped get my body back to some sense of normalcy.

Everyone has time. I guess it's all in how you want to spend it.

David

RTR spoiled?

quote:

Originally posted by DPC:
Rusty,

I agree and don't agree if that makes any sense LOL.

I just recently joined the 'More time than I know what to do with ranks"
But before that it was overtime once or twice a week and ON Call one week out of every month .During my on call week it was not uncommon for me to go to work at 7 in the mourning and get off work at 7 the Next mourning and I did that at least 3 times that week on call. A 24 hour work day at the power company is just one of things you get used to.My worst year or best if your my wife, I worked 1600 hours overtime.

But during all that time,the trains never went anywhere . Every time I had time they were just as I left them .It's the nice thing about this hobby.
It was always relaxing to come home, get some much needed sleep and then sit down and get my mind off of car hit poles and police reports or what guy on the crew needed this or that.It helped get my body back to some sense of normalcy.

Everyone has time. I guess it's all in how you want to spend it.

David

Here's the funny part, David. 20+ years ago when I was a field guy in the long gone computer mainframe/remote terminal biz, I also used to put in long hours and be on call. Been there with the 18-24 hour days. (Nothing like a Mopac yard office getting hit by lightning and having to fix every terminal and printer in the place...)

I did quite a bit of model building back then. It was a great way to unwind from the demands of the job... when I was home.

Also had more energy and less responsibilites back then.

Times change, modeling habits and desires change. It's that simple. At least I think it is...

Rusty

I don't build them because I have no interest in that side of the hobby. I appreciate those that build kits or scratch build or super detail kits into some of the beautiful models that we see in magazines and here on the forum. It just has never been an aspect of the hobby I have been interested in. I enjoy running trains, reseaching the history of the hobby and spending time with my family more.

I built a "Sandy Andy" once and that was enough to
"sour" me on kits for the rest of my life !
RTR for me !!!

dkdkrd,


How right you are buddy .Here in the Roanoke area before cable you had your choice of channels 7,10 or 13 that was it!!!

We couldn't have cared less about TV if there was A program on during the week we liked, we watched it but not everything every night.
I have maybe 3 or 4 shows I like to watch. But it aint where I plant my Butt 24/7

David

The question is; "Is this end of the hobby gone"?

I have many friends in the O gauge model railroad hobby. Most do not want to take the time or expense to scratch build. I must admit, that if I did not like the look of scratch built items on my layout, I would not take the time or expense to complete them.

I hope this end of the hobby does not go away. It is not gone now, as I have been able to get the kits I want. As for the future, it will depend somewhat on who enters the hobby and how much help is available.

This forum porvides a great deal of help for anyone interested in scratch building. Thank you all who are there with the great advice.

Mike