RC tooling for sale?

[C855B]

It's people! Soylent Green is people!

 ;D

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Ahahahahahahahahahahhahaahah

[C855B]

Yeah, that's the ticket... combine bits of a Walthers steel mill and a Plastruct refinery and you'll have a pretty good Soylent plant. Anybody make a half-decent rear-load garbage truck?

(A module idea in the making? THAT would sure weird-out a lot of people. [evil grin])

[CoalPorter]

RC's n scale lacked too much detail to really ever attack me.
They have a large selection on N scale body styles, but for some reason could never crack more than a foot or two of shelf space at the LHS.? The N scale offerings were not to the same standard as the HO or O...too bad because they have some cars that are near misses.  :-\ :'(

[Ed Kapuscinski]

It's funny you mention that, when I was at MBK, we had gotten a BUNCH of their centerbeams.

RC's problem, in my book, was that they never really got release scheduling figured out.

They'd do a TON of stuff, all at once, and flood the market (cannibalizing their own sales - Do I want the CN centerbeams this month, or the cool looking NOKL ones?). Then they'd go dormant for a while.

Also, they would tend to do this only with individual car types, for example, 2005 was the year of the centerbeam, then there was the year of the autorack, then...

Some of the newer guys seem to have gotten it much more right: Bluford's "This mont we're doing modern, next month 80s, next month 60s" schemes on cars, or FVM's "This month hoppers, next month, Soo boxes, then other boxes, then GEVOs" approach. This way the pipeline gets itself cleared up for focused modelers, and you always have something with the "what's new and cool" buzz.

[Mark5]

It's funny you mention that, when I was at MBK, we had gotten a BUNCH of their centerbeams.

RC's problem, in my book, was that they never really got release scheduling figured out.

They'd do a TON of stuff, all at once, and flood the market (cannibalizing their own sales - Do I want the CN centerbeams this month, or the cool looking NOKL ones?). Then they'd go dormant for a while.

Also, they would tend to do this only with individual car types, for example, 2005 was the year of the centerbeam, then there was the year of the autorack, then...

Very true. All at once!

[Erik W]

It's funny you mention that, when I was at MBK, we had gotten a BUNCH of their centerbeams.

RC's problem, in my book, was that they never really got release scheduling figured out.

They'd do a TON of stuff, all at once, and flood the market (cannibalizing their own sales - Do I want the CN centerbeams this month, or the cool looking NOKL ones?). Then they'd go dormant for a while.

Also, they would tend to do this only with individual car types, for example, 2005 was the year of the centerbeam, then there was the year of the autorack, then...

Some of the newer guys seem to have gotten it much more right: Bluford's "This mont we're doing modern, next month 80s, next month 60s" schemes on cars, or FVM's "This month hoppers, next month, Soo boxes, then other boxes, then GEVOs" approach. This way the pipeline gets itself cleared up for focused modelers, and you always have something with the "what's new and cool" buzz.

That's true.  Most of us are on some sort of budget so if a lot of what we want is offered at one time we might have to pass up potential purchases.  Also, as consumers we may not like the limited availability of rolling stock, but we're less inclined to shell out our shekels now if we knew that the manufacturer (and dealers) would have these things sitting around for years.  From a manufactureres prospective, inventory on the shelf = money on the shelf.  

Erik

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Exactly.

And at the higher volume retailers, they simply don't have the shelf space for it all, so then it comes in, sits, and gets blown out later at a deeper discount.

The consumer wins financially, but loses because, as we see, it's an unsustainable model.

[Bob Bufkin]

You guys get all the more modern cars.  I've got a tone of their X29's and I'm glad I did.  Actually I usually got them at a decent price.  Wish I could find more of the corrigated end one thou as it seems they flooded the market years ago with the straight end X29's.

[CoalPorter]

Yea but, if you go to a store, what does an empty shelf equal ?
 ???
There is nothing more pathetic than a hobby store with one or two crummy things left in stock.

[SkipGear]

I'll agree with the Fest or Famon marketing by Red Caboose. Another thing that may have hurt them is lack of a distribution network. Now with IM distributing them and timing the releases, maybe things can be reborn. RC has some very niche filling cars that would be a shame to loose.

As a shop, we would have loved to carry the product before but discount was horrible dealing with Walthers. I know we wouldn't sell enough to deal with RC direct. A smaller shop can only sell so many $40 autoracks before their customer base is tapped out and that seemed to be all that was coming out at the time. At at that, even though the road names are all over the place in a real train, customers still tend to buy just the locals so we would be waiting for quite a long time between useable releases.

I hope IM does something positive with RC and keeps the releases flowing and varried. We ordered quite a few of the coil cars for the shop and now it seem like they just might not happen. There is more to life than Centerbeams and Autoracks, the X-29 and flats were very welcome releases to see from IM.

[Mark5]

I'm hoping to get one of the 42' flat cars ...

[bbussey]

I'm after the black "NW" scheme (not that crappy 1980s boxcar red scheme!). I bought one of the RC cars to dissect and repaint into the N&W black scheme.

I like the crappy 1980s boxcar red scheme.  In fact, I gave RC all the info to do the billboard scheme.  But previously I had made my own replacing the standard etched panels with new mesh ones, along with new etched ends.



TTGX 977222 (NW)

It will be a shame to lose these cars from the market, both from a kitbashing standpoint and additional potential model variations.

[Bob Bufkin]

I'm hoping to get one of the 42' flat cars ...

I've got 2 sets of the PRR MOW equipment which has 2 flats (one yelloe, and one gray).  If you want the gray one, we can work something out.

Bob

[lock4244]

It will be a shame to lose these cars from the market, both from a kitbashing standpoint and additional potential model variations.

What is to say they will disappear? Maybe for a time until the molds are purchased, but when (and I guess if) they are bought, the new owners will have the nicest autoracks in N scale. It'll be a real shame and a backwards step for N if they disappear permanently, but if they do, I have about 25 that don't fit in with my new era so I've some bashing fodder going forward for a while (long while).

I won't touch the RC covered hoppers, but the centrebeams, 62' RBL's, and the bi-levels are well represented in my fleet. I'm also looking to get a few of their 57' refers... don't own any yet but the look nice enough in pictures. The twelve numbers at a time was a bit much, six seems better (unless you just have to have seven of something). I really, really love the bi-levels RC made; great looking, capture the feel of the prototype, and they were not too bad on the wallet given the street price.

NW, I like the billboard N&W (have two of them), but I'll take the black one you're wishing for, too.