Joe Bussing said:
I’d love to know the back-story to the anticipated demise of the Spectrum line. My observations from my club are that the Spectrum narrow gauge locomotives are well established, but the rolling stock is seldom purchased. Club members (and me) would rather purchase new or used Accucraft narrow gauge stock. I never see Big Hauler stuff. Could it be that Spectrum is caught in the middle of the good-better-best conundrum? Big Hauler is good. Spectrum is better. Accucraft is best. I catch myself searching ebay for used Accucraft rolling stock and picking it up for the price of new Spectrum stock.
I’ve always liked Spectrum locomotives and own four of them. Their lower price point makes them much more accessable than Accucraft locomotives. However, I only need a limited number of locomotives. On balance, I purchase a lot more rolling stock and, personally, I consider Accurcraft quality and accuracy worth paying a bit more for.
Also, I never saw a great breadth of selection of Spectrum rolling stock. Could be I missing something? Are there other offerings besides box cars and tankers? Did they develop stock cars, flat cars, MOW cars, etc.? I don’t know.
I wish we were privey to the Bachmann’s unit sales numbers.
Personally I think Bachmann either vastly overestimated the potential 1/20.3 market or it tried in an effort to push the large scale narrow gauge market into 1/20.3 by becoming the major supplier of narrow gauge models. However I think they misfired by underestimating the existing establishment of 1/22.5 in the marketplace coupled with unfortunate timing of the economic recession which drove a great number of modelers out of the hobby, and the subsequent Chinese economy wreaking havoc on model train manufacturing supply and price spiking.
While many modelers did jump on the 1/20 train with new layouts and many rebuilt their layouts to accommodate the larger 1/20.3 stock, some even multiple times, I suspect that even with the demise of LGB for a while, far more already established 1/22.5 layout owners simply refused to restart/rebuild and simply kept what they already had, if they needed anything they simply went to the second hand-market on Ebay. The recession took what was a growing hobby hobby and threw a crowbar into the mechanism. Those with already established layouts simply held on to what they had, those who had planned to get in now found themselves without the necessary disposable income and dropped out altogether, leaving a market of mostly already well established modelers who simply didnt need or have room for new aquisitions, all this leaving Bachmann high and dry.
The increasing cost of manufacturing in China was probably the death-nail for Spectrum, when the Forney came out with a close to $1500 MSRP for an engine LGB was selling for literally half that price you just knew something was going wrong somewhere. Its generally a terrible idea to introduce vastly more expensive product in the middle of a huge recession but thats exactly what Bachmann did, and while they new models did find buyers, the new high price models were alot harder to shift, so hard they mostly sat in the warehouses in China. The bean counter in China had to have see that the US market has receded greatly since 2008, and that even with the economy slowly rebounding, the old pre-2007 Boom market simply wasn’t there and wasn’t going to come back, maybe ever. the market is different, the demographics have shifte. Also factor in the Lee Rily’s personality was a great motivating factor behind the 1/20 movement, without anyone like him to wave the banner in the Kader organization, the bean counters are going to put the beans where they can sell them, and for the time being that means no Spectrum. Will it come back? maybe, if the economy gets better and people start demanding it.
Personally though I always thought 1/20 had too many drawbacks, sure there great to look at, but the plastic details were fragile as heck, and they are huge, I mean really HUGE, when I first saw the 1/20 K-36 I said that it was big enough it could almost be Ride-On. Ever see 1/20 Jackson-Sharp passenger cars from Accucraft? holy smokes they are gigantic… and these giant trains REQUIRE giant trackage and giant yards and giant layouts. Something not alot of people have room for. The smaller 1/22.5 stuff can be more easily accommodated in most peoples yards as they can run on smaller diameter track and they have a very long track record of being more accomodatable in reserved spaces, which is VERY appealing to newbies.
So from my POV, and this is just my own opinion, but I think 1/20 was a niche (1/20) in a niche (narrow gauge) in a niche (large scale). This inside an already longer established world of pre-existing 1/22.5 trains. In the long run I think Bachmann should simply re-issue everything it has done in narrow gauge Spectrum (1/20 and On30), but in the already easier to accommodate world of 1/22.5. Then they would have a seamless crossover market with LGB, Piko, and Hartland products, new and old, already on the market. That’s a marketing no brainer to me!
