Large Scale Central

So where do we go from here?

General Discussion
#1

I don’t visit other rail sites anymore, since Dan went the way of the Steam Loco in mainline service…but idleness got the best of me this fine Saturday morning, and I stumbled into MLS. Found an interesting thread there:

http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/afv/topic/aff/4/aft/114748/afpg/2/Default.aspx

and from it gleaned this post from our on Victor:

Quote:
. . . 11 Mar 2010 10:26 PM The foibles of "pre-orders" crosses all scale lines, I heard someone bellyaching about a promised product, or more specificly the cancelling of it due to low preorders. So dont be surprised if this becomes a bigger trend given the crap-conomy we live in, no one is going to stick there necks out.

As for my own perspective I dont beleive anything is made until I see it on the shelves, till then its all just advertising. Anyone still waiting for USA’s 0-6-0 switcher, the one that overnight magically morphed into the Docksider? All the manufacturers have done there bit to kill off marketshare in LS.

Aristo has made alot of promises that they have never fullfilled, remember the promised SD-9? I do. or the axles on the Mikes? Theres a very good reason Bmann is so tight lipped about new product, they dont say sheee-iit till its almost ready for production. likely just to avoid the hyperbola if they give to much time for consumers to think about it, remember the Vulcan?

As for LGBs “fall from grace” it was NO gracefull fall, …it was a fully armed B1B jet augering into the Mojave desert floor at Mach 2 on the meter. You could feel the heat from the fireball here in LA. Then after LGB did the Big Firework self destruction in such a huge public fashion, a certain portion of the fanbase then proceeded to foster alot of animosity in the LS community anywhere whenever anyone tried to actually rationally discuss the situation. Alot of that animosity was redirected directly at LGB users in general even those who did nothing wrong and the product itself, the certain portions zeal to protect king and country was viewed by outsiders and newbies more as “what a bunch of nutballs” (more direct quotes from discussions at shows) great advertising for LS, no wonder its dropped off a bit.

[b]Marklin then ignored the US market for close to 3 years, then chose one of the most insular distributors around and then raised the prices on everything even the stuff thats been around for over 20 years. On top of that the quality has gone down (direct quote from a long time dealer) and they are still not shipping alot anywhere anyway.

As for Bachmann, when was the last release that didnt have some kind of “gnashing of teeth” associated with it? I personally wouldnt be surprised if the Forney is the end of the line for any new 1/20 product, instead Bmann/Kader focusing on the potentially way more profitable On30 and the Thomas and freinds lineup in LS.[/b]

I dunno maybe I’m just tired out ( I do get up at 5am for work ) but it seams like the only makers not imbroiled in some rubbarb of some sort are USA, HLW, and Accu (but I’m sure someone will point out failings there as well) Theres nothing new in any issue of GR, the only reason I still read it is for the layouts, not the advertising - that hasnt changed in over a year. the only thing that changes is the prices.
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Bold=cale

There are many great questions raised in that post as well as some interesting opinions, it’s the last post of page 2…I’m gonna go back and read some more, but wanted to ask you…my LSC friends…Where shall we go from here?

edit for edit :slight_smile:

#2

There is a reason the term “Ventilators” came to be…and it was actually quite descriptive.

Facts were ignored, and those who posted such were shouted down (or an attempt was made to do so), and then the flames started in an attempt to get threads locked that did not fit into the Ventilator’s view of their world.
You see the same carp (sp) from the Aristo crowd, any news that doesn’t fir their narrow, insular viewpoint is shouted down with screams of “bashing”.

How is publishing a news report or copying verbatim the comments of a company owner considered “bashing”?

I do think he’s right on the Forney.

Talking to dealers, sales of the last several items have not been good…

Why?
Economy?
Yes, partly.
Adherence to scale for a chosen scale that is populated by rivet counters?
Yeah.
Quality control?
You betcha.

I mean, why advertise a Mallet, with drawings, and then make a Meyer?
Toy-trainers don’t care, but the scale-oriented folks do.
Why choose a 2’ prototype and blow it up to 3’, and then make it R-1 friendly?

I get a kick out of my hobby of rebuilding OLD H0 stuff…one freaking wire in the locos…most of the old ones never even had headlights…rather “jewels” glued in…no freaking supersockets…

Simplicity.
Adjust your worm mesh.
Clean your motors, adjust your brush tension if out, they run just fine.

No “patented” drives with gauges all over the board.

Do you know how many years ago I told the major manufacturers about G1MRA?
And they STILL don’t get it.

Try to get it “right” and the “bashing” garbage starts up again.

The end of it will be directly faulted to those who cried “bashing” and didn’t want anything “fixed”.

History will tell.

#3
C. Nelson said:
...Where shall we go from here?
the answer is clear - down the slope.

as with anything else we need or want, with modeltrains we will try to make the asian junk do as good as possible, or we buy and repair second hand items.

looking back, the 60ties and the 70ties were the peak of western industrial age. since then we fight against the decline.
if i look on ebay, the older locos are more expensive, than the newer (asian-made) ones.

maybe we will evolve some vulture manners of behaviour.
if a collector meets his maker, we will befriend the widow…

and, on a happyer way of thoughts - making your own stuff will be more and more in fashion.

#4

AMEN!

I’m having a great time custom building.

#5

Well considering that post was me in a particularly sour mood, but I’ll still stand by what I observed. Now that said I dont think we are sliding down the slope just yet, more like “dead slow ahead, dead straight ahead”, no divergence to the left or right.

One thing to consider was how far the manufacturers extended themselves out during the lead up the the market crash. How many copycat GG1s and Big Boys did we have? How much effort went into those that could have been better served creating base market share, not pie in the sky “Ohh Lookie At What We Have and You Dont”. I swear sometimes I thing these manufacturers are no different than kids on a play ground each trying to out boast each other, “Oh Yeah My Big Boy is better than yours”, meantime they began putting all the corporate eggs into the tiny collector basket while they ignored offering basic, solid products that would have a much broader appeal. Lets face it, they all layed eggs with the GG1s, the various Big Boy’s had a mass market that could be counted on two hands, and the K and the Mallet both needed layouts the size of Rhode Island, yet the majority rest of us get promises, and offerings like the standard gauge Connie and others that would have been big sellers with small to moderate layout owners get stiffed. Their is a reason the best selling models in HO were always the smaller locomotives like Connies, Moguls, Prairies, and small Mikes. Big Boys are cool, but even a Northern offering would have been a far better choice marketwise.

Maybe Bachmann learned their lesson the hard way from the Mallet and the K that bigger doesnt mean better sales, and are hoping for a better return by offering the smaller affordable Lyn and Indy and the Climax reduex this year that have more appeal to the average LSer.

I think Aristo will only offer limited # of releases (if any) for the next 2 years until they get their house in order and the economy gives them enough market to begin production of any new items, and even that is speculaton, I really have no idea how things are being decided there, but it seams logic is a banned word sometimes. In the last 5 years I would have made the Connie an absolute priority along with a Connie based small Mike and a standard gauge 0-6-0/2-6-0 offering using a shortened version of the same drive brick, an updated 0-4-0 and a Dockside 0-4-0T version. Market these for between $200 and $400-500, they would have had the base standard gauge steam locomotive market covered. Instead where are we today???

You tell me…as for me, I’ve begun collecting Pre-War Marx O windup trains, no worries about what the next release will be, whether it will have any wiring issues, QC issues, StuperSocket issues, proprietary electric crap I dont want but causes my train to not run right anyways, let alone if fits my Layout/time/scale/era/roadname/yadda yadda…everythings already been made, its all out there already, all I do is decide which ones I like to look at, wind them up and watch them careening around the layout at 400mph :lol:

#6

I can tell you one thing about the Lyn.
If it stays 1:22.5 scale, it will have about the same level of sales success as the first one did.
If Bachmann make the Lyn 1:20.3, that may be acceptable to the 16 mm scale enthusiasts, as long as the drive mechanism is adjustable beteween 32 mm gauge and 45 mm gauge.
If not, they will have another flop on their hands.

#7
Doug Arnold said:
AMEN!

I’m having a great time custom building.


Me too. :slight_smile:

#8

I wonder if now would be a good time for a ‘parts’ manufacturer to appear. A few good gear boxes, drivers, cylinders, etc. I have seen some great scratch/bashes here and on the other site. If memory serves, that is how the ‘American’ market began - bashing Euro LGB imports.

Just a thought…

Bob C.