Must be the industry's week to dump....

[Puddington]

Not that they contribute a lot to n scale but.....from my buddies at Credit Valley Railway....

Credit Valley Railway Company
Athearn has just notified us, due to ongoing problems in China with their manufacturing facilities, all non-Genesis products are delayed until further notice. In addition, there will be no new starter sets this year - limited supply of Athearn sets in stock....

......... and the hits just keep on comin.................

[lock4244]

Meh... the only thing that really has me down is the delay to the Prairie Shadows (Rapido) CN PSC vans. Not like Athearn is doing anything I personally can't live without, though it is a cautionary tale of the pitfalls in placing you eggs in one basket... then handing the basket to a snake.

[ljudice]

Lots of Ethanol cars caught up in this....

[delamaize]

wonder if China realizes how much they are shooting theirselfs in the foot, and how long till more hobby manufactures to other nations.

[central.vermont]

It's time to be....................................................................

[sizemore]

It's time to be....................................................................

Yeah and then your models cost twice what they do now. Or you end up with MT cars that everyone bashes for ride height, details, or right paint job/wrong car and some other nonsense  .

The S.

[asarge]

Lots of Ethanol cars caught up in this....

Boy don;t I know.

This is old news. They have had to get in the back of the bus as far as trying to schedule factory time and maybe trying to get on with a new one....not tooo menion having to pay someone to make sure the tooling gets moved and that's IF they Chinese government releases the tooling. Athearn got hit by the perfect storm.

The issues in China are much bigger than just the toy and hobby industry, unfortunately since it is not REALLY high on their priority list, the government isn't jumping thru hoops to help.

The manufacturer's made their bed so to speak in China and well, it's hurting us and our appetite for stuff, but it's killing them.

[JoeD]

Funny!

Joe
MTL

Yeah and then your models cost twice what they do now. Or you end up with MT cars that everyone bashes for ride height, details, or right paint job/wrong car and some other nonsense  .

The S.

[asarge]

I said on the A-Board and I'llsay it here. B**** and complain all you want about MTL, but you can count on product every month at a pretty stable price. The ones that work with China........................................?........................................?. Except for Atlas and IMR have some consistency but the rest................................................?.......................................?

[bbussey]

ESM hasn't had any delivery problems.  Granted, we don't churn out releases monthly.  But we've always been within a month or two of our announced delivery dates, and most of the delays have been due to shipment/customs issues as opposed to manufacturing/scheduling issues.  The X58, which was announced 18 months out, was on time.  It was full new-tooling-to-production project and the most complex one we've done, with an entirely new coupler pocket design that had to go through numerous tests and tweaking on top of it.

And we couldn't produce our current mass-market products in America and keep them affordable.  At least all the design work is done in America, which is one major reason we are able to hit our delivery dates.

[ljudice]

As I've said before - when iPhones and iPads are caught in this mess, watch out!

Delays just mean more time and money for track and layout construction!

[central.vermont]

Yeah and then your models cost twice what they do now. Or you end up with MT cars that everyone bashes for ride height, details, or right paint job/wrong car and some other nonsense  .

The S.

S.,
There is some truth to what you say. MT does have there issue's but they have been trying to listen more then they have in the past. Their costs are not that far off from the other manufactures. As far as being cheaper in China I think we are seeing that changing and in the future there will not be that much of a difference. I might be the only one that is willing to pay a little more for my model wether it be a freight car or an engine but am probably not.
Remember by buying American you are helping OUR economy and not some other country!

Jon

[JoeD]

I think in the next 5 years what ever advantage you have going to china may dry up.  I know some folks are looking for Vietnam and other less developed countries to do production, but the down time and the cost to bring a new mfg on line is costly.  With the advent of Micro Work these days I think it would be possible to almost do what Priesler and a few other German companies did to make in country assembly and decorating cost effective.  I know a few of them set up networks of housewives in the local community and had their asembly and painting work done at a fair price.  With the Micro Work networks going up it's possible have some of the hand work done locally.  We do some of that here and it works great...everyone wins.  I know your tooling cannot be moved out of China, but there are options for doing the rest of the production here.  Heck, give the amount of discourse on Railwire, you could probably hire the lot to do assembly...they seem to have plenty of time on their hands 

Joe

ESM hasn't had any delivery problems.  Granted, we don't churn out releases monthly.  But we've always been within a month or two of our announced delivery dates, and most of the delays have been due to shipment/customs issues as opposed to manufacturing/scheduling issues.  The X58, which was announced 18 months out, was on time.  It was full new-tooling-to-production project and the most complex one we've done, with an entirely new coupler pocket design that had to go through numerous tests and tweaking on top of it.

And we couldn't produce our current mass-market products in America and keep them affordable.  At least all the design work is done in America, which is one major reason we are able to hit our delivery dates.

[GaryHinshaw]

It seems a bit odd that they just announced another run a big steam a week before this comes out. 

I'm glad I snapped up a few more LPG tankers at the LHS this week - at Canadian MSRP - since that may be it for a while. I'm doubly glad that I'm pre-occupied with layout construction. 

-Gary

[asarge]

As I've said before - when iPhones and iPads are caught in this mess, watch out!

They just had to give the workers at their big plant in Taiwan to keep them from working so much overtime and Apple got busted for not paying them the legal overtime wage in Taiwan. But that's not the PRC, the newer issues with the Hobby/Toy/Craft industry in China are unique to that country's government policies.

I think in the next 5 years what ever advantage you have going to china may dry up.  I know some folks are looking for Vietnam and other less developed countries to do production, but the down time and the cost to bring a new mfg on line is costly. 

VERY true. I ahve a client that supplies craft supplies to major retailers in the US and they have been looking at Vietnam, Thailand, Phillipines and India. All have their own issues. China is going to lose a fair amount of factories in this sector pretty soon, but they don't care as this industry is not their primary focus.