AM HAD 4-6-2's for most of their heavyweights, with the exception of C&O (there is a C&O decorated Santa Fe Northern, though) Rio Grande and C&NW. Most of the Pacific's have been sold out for some time now.
Rusty
Well, my S-G was in the mailbox today!! Great interviews Bill. The responses were carefully crafted (as to be expected).
And, respectfully, no it isn't simple--or it wasn't simple in 'the old days' MOQ for a product was more involved and smaller, especially with body and frame shells and trucks on hand. Item costs are smaller if production numbers are higher, due to manufacturing efficiencies. So, say you want to run 1,000 SY&Z RR passenger cars, three car sets (3,000 finished items). Well, when you fire up the injection machines, you make 4,000 of each shell (12,000 shells)--granted, this is an investment of 6,000 (at 50¢ a shell), but you make that many as you project that soon you will also want to make two more passenger car sets for some other railroads and set up costs for both the 1K and 4K run are the same, so there's a big savings there. Yes, there is the expense of storing the future run cars, but that is slight as the warehouse is big, and holding a lot of other things. Now the MOQ costs for each set are less and you can run this product out the door. GEE, it was REALLY popular, so fire up the assembly line and spit out another 500 or 1000 to fill the unexpected need--since all the pieces are on hand, and the paint masking tooling is still around, that's a simple thing to do, and you also have a lower MOQ needed, as much of the production costs were amortized over the original production run.
Nowadays though, you come up with an idea, contact the overseas manufacturer who quotes you a price to make the 1K car sets. You get a prototype, everyone looks it over, changes are made, another prototype is shipped over, OK, this one seems fine, start production-- the manufacturer comes back with; Oh, we can't, the delay caused us to commit to another item, the line will be available to you in three weeks (months???) The item finally is made (after more back and forth across) the water problem solving. Demand is very high, but not high enough to make another 1K, which is the overseas manufacturer's minimum. Oh, and now he can't find the tooling.
Yes, we do still get some good stuff (and some bad stuff, but that was true in the "old days"), but the system is now separated into individual units; Stockholders, who really only look at the bottom line; Product managers who suggest ideas to the product developers, who may or may not be in the same building--or even the same country! Then the prototype shop, typically at the overseas manufacturer's location. And any communications breakdown results in longer delays--one doesn't just "run upstairs and see what the engineers think" to fix an issue, and come back down an hour later with a fix (sometimes faster, sometimes slower). And finally the manufacturing line, where oftentimes a small mistake in production isn't found until the boxes arrive at the US location. In the old days boxes were randomly taken right off the shipping storage, and opened and tried out, just to make certain things were as they should be. One good thing about modern production though, is that it is much more consistent so quality control CAN be simpler.
I see this as one big difference between doing everything "in house" and the "outsource everything" system. Yep, I'm old school. . . .
Yep David, what you describe are the "Good Old Days" when we didn't have a world economy. You know American cars are built in pieces all over the world just like toy trains. We will have to live with the new world because it won't change back to 1950.
Anyway, getting back to Frisco passenger cars, the Meteor wasn't always a "matched train." Pullman green Frisco cars would also do:
Rusty
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NotInWI posted:Jerry
Even when they pitched that C&O set they did not pitch it well. Anyone who knows O and S gauge (let alone a company that makes both) would know that that was a picture of O gauge under sized passenger cars. CANT believe Lionel spent the money on the ink to catalogue that nonsense.
Ben
Ben,
Lionel does their S illustrations using O items all the time. Nobody is fooled, it's just what they do. The NKP set and C&O freight set were illustrated this way. They weren't made either. Even the Polar Express was originally illustrated in the same manner. Ink is cheap. But their advertising of a set, or anything, and then not producing it doesn't surprise me any more. I'm done with them. Combine that with my C&O Berk which has had problems and both the dealer and Lionel will not or cannot fix it due to non availability of parts. Their so-called warranty means nothing. What a way to run a company. Any company that doesn't have replacement parts for their items is courting bad press. But I feel they really don't care.
That's because of the way they are organized, vertical, I would call it as opposed to the "old way" horizontal integration. Has little to do with "global economy" so much as modern management techniques as applied to the manufacturing process.
Bill, yes car parts are made all over the world, but the assembly process usually happens here in US. The assembly process, no matter where it happens is "in house" not "outsourced" in order to contain quality and cost controls. And yet look at all the recalls they face! L should have recalled ALL their AF production with the die-cast coupler bodies. That just doesn't work with two rail power pickup, once the paint wears off. (those of you with Flyonel NP sets giving you grief, the couplers are usually why!) Just a case of something that likely would not have happened if design & production were under one roof.
banjoflyer posted:Rusty Traque posted:I'm with ya Rusty. I did see that pic but was looking for a color shot. So...that baggage car looks to be painted to match the tender what with the white stripe being the same size. I'd guess the other color was blue to also match the tender.
Mark
Frankly, your going to have a hard time finding photos of Frisco steam (and their trains) in color anyway. There are a couple, but the Frisco was fully dieselized by early 1952 (as I recall) when not too many folks were taking color photos.
The closest color pictures you're going to find are of the former St. Louis Steam Train Association support cars which were painted in the Firefly/Meteor colors:
Rusty
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That just doesn't work with two rail power pickup, once the paint wears off. (those of you with Flyonel NP sets giving you grief, the couplers are usually why!) Just a case of something that likely would not have happened if design & production were under one roof.
TRAINDAVID
If you are still having this problem with your NP set you can solve it by getting the power pick-up wheels consistent from car to car, get the pick-up wheel on each car on the same side of the trucks that are not insulated from the chassis, and do the same with wheel sets on the insulated trucks, no more shorts.
Ray
Ray, I thought of that, changing each other car's wheelsets around, but that means you have to never change the order of the cars AND you can't do that with the engines, due to the slider shoes. Changing the couplers on the engines though, is easy. It's still a major design flaw IMHO perpetrated by 3-rail engineers who didn't (don't?) understand 2 rail technology. In-house testing should have found the problem. Then there's the problem of the new can motors operating at a lower voltage than the old ones, so you get jack-rabbit starts that usually derail cars. A voltage dropper fixes that, but why should we have to fix brand new trains with things to make them work right?
I know, preaching to the choir here!! When I finally get my layout running, I will have a lot of "imagineering" to do!
traindavid posted:Ray, I thought of that, changing each other car's wheelsets around, but that means you have to never change the order of the cars AND you can't do that with the engines, due to the slider shoes. Changing the couplers on the engines though, is easy. It's still a major design flaw IMHO perpetrated by 3-rail engineers who didn't (don't?) understand 2 rail technology. In-house testing should have found the problem.
I'm not sure if in house testing would have caught the problem. I was running my California Zephyr set before a train show opened to the public and it ran for over 30 minutes straight before enough of the coating wore off the problem showed up. Drove me nuts before I figured out what was happening.
Still, metal couplers on lighted Flyer passenger cars is a classic boner. I've got a batch of plastic couplers for my CZ, just never got around to installing them.
Rusty
Yoicks, I did not realize the CZ cars had those couplers too. Fortunately, my CZ cars are pulled by the correct SHS F units! (WP NEVER owned PAs; the only PAs used on the CZ, AFAIK, were the Rio Grande ones.) The Tom H. obs car looks great. Wish he was still producing his neat shells.
I am a little late replying to this thread but I had to add my 2 cents. Roundhouse Bill, I understand the finance behind Lionel's statement about quantity runs but with a little more planning they can be easily overcome. One of the problems Lionel had with both the D&H and SP Legacy Alco's was that people wanted to buy them after they saw that passenger cars were going to be available but their BTO quantities were locked. I would suggest Lionel go with a 3 year planning cycle.
For example, Had Lionel been smart enough to advertise that Passenger cars were coming the next year The BTO quantity on the engines would have been higher and the sale of Passenger cars would have been higher.
So in 2017 I would come out with another engine that would require passenger cars and state in the catalog (next to the picture of the engine) that they are coming in 2018. In 2018 I would come out with another engine that would require passenger cars and issue passenger cars for the Meteor, the 2017 engine and the 2018 engine. This was they would cover the order quantity of producing the shells and increase their engine orders because now people would be willing to buy the engines knowing the Passenger cars were on the way.
--Rocco--
Rocco: Since we are not inside Lionel's decision making group we have no idea how they make decisions and why there is no way for us to influence the process. All I know is that they have no plans to make passenger cars for the blue Frisco Meteor engine. I suppose that could change, but who knows.
It appears from the pictures that the cars for the Meteor were heavyweight type cars of no particular paint scheme for the whole train. That will be easy to replicate on the layout.
Mark Hieger "BanjoFlyer" is talking with Ron at American Models about making the cars to match the engine. You might contact him if you have an interest.
Bill
Wouldn't that really tweak Lionel's managers--to have AM come out with cars to match their locomotive for which they didn't provide the cars! And what a coup for Ron!!!
I Love it when a plan comes together!!!
(Quote from "The A Team" TV show)
(Quote from "The A Team" TV show)traindavid posted:Wouldn't that really tweak Lionel's managers--to have AM come out with cars to match their locomotive for which they didn't provide the cars! And what a coup for Ron!!! I Love it when a plan comes together!!!
It's no big tweek.
I use AM's B&O 72' cars behind my Lionel-Flyer B&O 4-6-2 and they look durn tootin' good, too.
Lionel never did a set of B&O heavyweights for the Pacific. Streamliners that came with the earlier B&O Mikado set, yes, but heavyweights, no.
Nor did Lionel do passenger cars for the Erie and Atlantic Coast Line Pacific's.
Rusty
Just saw this on a facebook page. Delayed until October.
Thank you for your online submission expressing your disappointment with
the delayed release of the M.T.H. S Gauge F-3 diesel locomotives. We
certainly appreciate your frustration and are even more disappointed in the
delays than you or any of our other S Gauge customers.
As is usual with such events, there is more to the story than just
installing our sound system into the existing S Helper chassis. In
reality, we had to completely redesign the drive train in order to house
the sound board, DCS/DCC decoder and our speed control monitoring
system. We had to develop an entirely new sound board because our O Gauge
boards are too large and our HO boards are not robust enough to manage the
higher amperage load of S Gauge layouts. In addition, we had to modify the
tooling to function with our injection machines. New paint masks had to be
created because none were transferred over from the Chinese vendor S Helper
employed to build their models and most recently, the speaker we had
planned to use in the model was discontinued and a new speaker had to be
sourced and ordered. It is this final issue that has pushed delivery back
to October.
Despite these issues, we could have accelerated the infusion of the S Gauge
line into all of our other product lines at a faster rate than we did. As
you know, we brought rolling stock and most of the track components to
market within about 18 months of announcing our purchase of S Helper. What
we should have been doing was paralleling the infusion of the locomotives
while we were producing the rolling stock (which only required tooling
modifications to work with our injection machinery). This probably would
have sped up delivery of the locomotives by at least half year if not
more. In hindsight, not doing this was a mistake.
The good news is that the locomotives are in production (awaiting the
delivery of the speakers late next month). Most importantly, we're
convinced these locomotives are going to be the best running S Gauge
diesels the marketplace has ever seen. In short, though long awaited,
these locomotives will be well worth the wait!
Sincerely,
Andy Edleman
Vice President - Marketing
M.T.H. Electric Trains
Thanks for posting this, Rich. It is nice they took the time to explain their reasoning and actually took responsibility for mistakes made in scheduling. Although the delays are still very frustrating, it is frustrating for both sided of the equation. Thanks, MTH and Andy, for taking the time to address this issue.
Roger Zuerlein
Rich,
Thank you Rich for posting this message about the MTH F-3's. I had figured this could be possibly be the case but I had hopes that they would be on the water any day. Although the O Gauge GE 44 Ton diesels have the same electronics incorporated as the F-3 S Gauge were proposed to be delivered in October 2016. The number of The Southern GE 44 Ton, which I looked up each day is 20-20469-1 and it is listed available October 2016 as all of them are.
MTH,
I am disappointed, yes, but I understand that there are unforeseen problems which have come up through the manufacturing process. I am just glad that they have notified us and hope they will be able to deliver the F-3's in October 2016 without any more delays. I know it will be the best operating loco with the most options that I will have.
Don
I think if Andy E's message is the reasoning for the delay, I hope that the unexpected complications that extended the F3 deliveries will NOT be present for the anticipated switchers....
Ben
Some guys here have been suggesting that I interview Desplains Hobbies for the S Gaugian as I have Lionel, American Models, and MTH. I discussed that with Don Heimburger, the Publisher/Editor of the magazine today. He says that the Association of S Gaugers did an interview with them in the Dispatch several issues ago and he is not interested in having me interviewing them.
Also, the owner of Desplains is primarily interested in scale buyers and the S Gaugian's subscribership is 90% High Rail. I didn't know the subscriber ratio was 90% for High Rail. That is sort of the percentage I hear from the major manufacturers: Lionel, MTH, and American Models.
For those of you with interest, the interview of Des Plains Hobbies was in the March/April 2016 edition of the Dispatch.
