New from Walthers in N!

[Rossford Yard]

mcjaco,

Well, I was including the distributors 10-15% cut, but you are right, typically, I believe the mfg gets about 40% of MSRP.  Even using old tooling, I wonder how much money these projects net them.  I do believe that most MRR mfgs do it more for love of the hobby than to make money, and yet, we bash and bash and bash because they aren't making one model that each or any of us dearly need.

Frankly, I have been surprised at how diverse the market has become in terms of prototypes.  I mean' Kato's full passenger trains?  Whoever dreamed that?  But, guessing the sales aren't there for a limited prototype loco doesn't make the folks at Walthers villains.  Nor does internet clamor make for a detailed marketing study.  I recall Paul Graf telling me at the NTS one year that all they heard for years was "Make the big Alcos" or "Make a U Boat" and when they made them, they weren't great sellers.

Short version, I think its probably what it ought to be, with the mfgs mostly making the right product decisions most of the time.  Of course, there are a few flubs, like the double products, but in all, if an Alco S2 can sell, they know it and make it, etc.

[bbussey]

Don't forget that the production costs come out of that hypothetical 40% as well.  It's not as if the manufacturer sees all or even most of that as profit.

[lock4244]

Why, when the ex-Life-Like units are perfectly fine?  The issue is that Walthers needs to reissue the Alco models, not that there needs to be money taken from finite resources spent on redundant tooling.

My sentiment is based on future availability, no the quality of the LL units.

[lock4244]

mcjaco,

 I recall Paul Graf telling me at the NTS one year that all they heard for years was "Make the big Alcos" or "Make a U Boat" and when they made them, they weren't great sellers.

I have often thought that the big Alcos would have sold better had they done an MLW as well, instead of CN and CP paint on an Alco. The MLW's are argubly the most storied of the brutes given their longevify in class 1 mainline servicr. I ignored the Atlas models until Briggs did the conversion shells and trucks. I have 21 now, but at huge cost given what the Briggs kits cost.