Why Are Kato N Scale Locos Priced So Low?

[flight2000]

Lombard has the best prices around here.  It's like a stampede at Trainfest when the doors open to get there first. 

And thanks, now I may run over there during lunch..... 

Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, now the secret is out and I'll need to buy everything I need in one shot....   

Just leave some for the rest of us...   

The MSRP on the newest batch of SD70ACe's is $138, so they have gone up on newly tooled items.  The older tooling is maintaining their original $90 and $95 MSRP, so they are at least not trying to kill the market.

Cheers,
Brian

[Hyperion]

The reason N scale locomotives cost less than the same in HO is simple.

It's not that being less detailed cost that much less or the raw material cost is less, or labor. 

Takes up less space in the container. 

Bill Kepner

The price of shipping individual N scale locos is pennies on container-sized loads.   I regularly receive 1/35 models in boxes 24x24x24 by Air for 5-day service for about $30.00.  You could easily ship 200 N-scale locomotives in such a box for a shipping cost of about $0.15/locomotive.  And that's for expedited parcel service (even if we consider the much higher weight of 200 locomotives, we'd still be talking well under $0.50 shipped cost per).  A 20ft container will run you about $2500, and that's sufficient for tens and tens of thousands of pieces; or portions can be had for just a few hundred bucks.  You could readily drive the price down to about $0.05/locomotive in shipping costs.

Even with HO being 4 times the volume you're talking about literally mere pennies on the total cost.  The reduced shipping cost due to the smaller volume of N-scale pieces would net out to a savings in the range of about $0.20/locomotive.

[Kisatchie]

Even with HO being 4 times the volume you're talking about literally mere pennies on the total cost.  The reduced shipping cost due to the smaller volume of N-scale pieces would net out to a savings in the range of about $0.20/locomotive.

An HO loco is actually more than 7 times the volume of an N scale engine. You forgot a dimension 


Hmm... Kiz is so fat, I
think he's 4-dimensional...

[garethashenden]

Isn't the obvious answer that they made too many of these particular models and now they want to move them quickly?

[loyalton]

Isn't the obvious answer that they made too many of these particular models and now they want to move them quickly?

But it ain't. First, this isn't the first run of E8s. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson by now if that was the case. I doubt someone left the "make-an-E8" switch on at the factory. And the price applies to all E8s in this run. MBK is rationing the Alaska ones one per buyer/order but has not jacked up the price for them. And they went even more stupid in-between to do E5s based on the same mech, where only 11 E5s were ever made with 9 owned by Burlington?

I haven't checked engine prices for a long time, but there's a big gap between MBK/BLW(forgot about them) and everyone else that discounts, bigger than I remember. Likely the biggest buyers get a better break wholesale, but the price difference seems to be big enough to kill off everyone else IMO.

Since Kato can maintain this price level, then can they become the big dog in the US prototype room? It would be something if they stepped up and did something like a Pennsy K4, though something like that already will be happening with UP 844. The beginning of the end for other manufacturers?

[basementcalling]

I care more that the modern engines I want from Kato have jumped up about as much as Atlas or Fox Valley compared to previous prices than that E units are bargains by comparison. Gone are the days of the under $70 street for new locomotive from most manufacturers.

Its not tooling issues because if you look through some of the loco pages at BLW that show new run versions with older runs still listed, the prices on SD70s and AC4400s jumped from first to second to third runs, and for some Atlas models too.