ESM - coming in late 2014 ...

[learmoia]

Comment Removed.

[nkalanaga]

Bryan:  That's what I figured, and why I don't expect to see them soon.  I know FVM did the MILW ribbed cars, which were also one road, but there were an AWFUL lot of them, they ran for decades, and any yard picture from the 40s and 50s was almost certain to have one somewhere.  The XM-4s wouldn't be nearly as popular.

Let's see.  5K?  I wonder if the CB&Q historical society could raise that?  Given the price of quality boxcars today, if they could sell a couple hundred to their members and friends, raising the extra $25 per car for the new tooling might be doable.  Of course, there are probably other cars the members would rather see first, and I'm not a member, but it's an idea for groups, and manufacturers, to consider.

[bbussey]

MILW also is Matt's road, which factors in.  Yes, only one road technically.  But there were dozens of schemes, variations that most of which weren't costly toolwise (wood and steel roofwalks etched from brass for example), the prototype was ubiquitous across the continent and they were in service for decades.  So the ribbed boxcars fall into the exception category.  Same scenario exists with the B&O Wagontop boxcar.

The $5k is an estimate based on when I explored tooling actual XML-14/16 side slides for the X58 tool, which already has two sets of sides and three sets of ends.  There still would be design and production costs on top of that, so it starts getting pricey if you attempt to amortize the tooling mods in one release.  I will admit though, that it is an advantage to be able to add new models to the roster for a fraction of the normal tooling simply by changing the sides.  Couldn't do that with the X65, but it's still less than half of the normal tooling cost because it's a new body that will use the existing X58 Hydra-Cushion components.  And, the lower cost is also attributable to eliminating the with-roofwalk option which was good for only two as-built schemes — schemes that had the roofwalks removed a year or to after their build dates.

[bbussey]

Hmmmmmm ...

I never say "never" but it's unlikely ESM will release any coil cars or 60-footers in the next decade.  The pipeline is pretty set with some interesting stuff.  If all goes well, there will be at least a new model every year for the next few years.  And some of those years, such as 2014, will have multiple new models.

Speaking of which, just received the pilot RP parts for the second 2014 model yesterday and they look awesome.  After the parts are pulled from the Bestine soak later today, it will be assembled and sent directly to performance testing on the test oval. 

[nkalanaga]

Yes, replaceable sides in a tool are nice, as the "Dreadnaught end and diagonal panel roof on a 50 ft underframe" combination was almost a standard.  Given enough money and market there are hundreds of models that could be made just by changing the sides.

I wonder if there would be a market for a boxcar "core kit", designed for interchangeable sides, like the American Model Builders passenger car core kit?  Third parties could make the sides any way they liked, as long as the edge thickness matched the core kit's mating surfaces.  Injection molded styrene, brass, laser-cut plastic, 3-D printed, cast metal, whatever was easiest for them.  Not necessarily a kit made by you, but as a manufacturer, would you think that someone could do it profitably?

[bbussey]

In this day and age, I don't think it's feasible.  The general desire of the N scale consumer base is to have ready-to-run product out of the box, so I don't think the subset of people actually willing to practice "railroad modeling" is large enough to justify a series of injection-molded boxcar kits.  Technically, that's exactly what the InterMountain rolling stock product lines were, and they were forced to start offering them RTR to increase the demand.

[nkalanaga]

Thank you.  I guess it's understandable, as many of the details on today's models are finer than I could easily install myself, and I don't mind building.  The machines are simply getting better than the average modeler...

[bbussey]

What I like to do to model esoteric cars that can be constructed from combining existing models is use a milling machine to make the precision cuts in the various models, create a pile of parts, and assemble the new model like a jigsaw puzzle.