Lowell Smith "RailSmith" Passenger Cars coming (former Walthers tooling)

[Mark5]

Theoretically 2nd Quarter.

https://lowellsmith.net/press-release-tooling-purchase

Mark

[sirenwerks]

Curious what his distribution will be. So far, it presents as direct and, given his price points, I don't see much hope of buying anymore Walthers cars. Especially since there's probablt no hope of getting undecs out of him.

[nscalbitz]

That's the trouble when someone does this as a 'hobby' business.
They don't need the incentive of work/ volume/ mass sales and will stick with their 'niche' mindset and premium (as set by industry "Best in Class" others).
Just manufacturing the most common and releasing at a $30-mid range as is would secure both the target audience AND revenue (at cost of efficiency and overheads) and then [later plans] expanding on new designs and paint at premiums may be too much to expect tho.
As they say, ah well....
FWIW, dave

*Edits.

[CBQ Fan]

Well considering the Walthers cars were DOA, they are now at lest somewhere that will produce them. More expensive is better than not at all.

[nscalbitz]

Well considering the Walthers cars were DOA, they are now at lest somewhere that will produce them. More expensive is better than not at all.

I agree.
Reason perhaps I own exactly one only Rapido passenger unit.
Only buy the niche you need, rather than accumulate what you 'want'. But that doesn't help the market conditions of supply/ demand.
I missed a classic Atlas release must have for my road required for the 'mid-60s' ops. Just recently got very last car from an e-tailler and need another bunch, but will I gettem? 

cheers d
[OT]- amended my post a little.

[thomasjmdavis]

Does anyone know for sure whether the "purchase of tooling" (it is in quotes on his website) means Lowell Smith has the tooling in his hands, or does it just mean he has purchased the rights to have the Chinese factory ship the resulting models to his address?  The quotes seem to imply the latter, and he will have to place minimum orders, one assumes in the thousands, to get his products made.  In which case, I would expect distribution to be wider than the current limited edition model he works on.  I assume he has planned wider distribution, regardless of how the cars are being manufactured, and that was the purpose of creating a separate "RailSmith" line.

I bought so many of these cars during the Walthers "going out of the N scale passenger business" sale(s) that he will have to do one heck of a paint job to get me interested in any of those (at $49, anyway).  But if he comes out with a diner, or a baggage dorm, or some such, might be interested.

[Mark5]

To put the price in perspective, the Walthers list for these was $39.98.

Mark

[thomasjmdavis]

To put the price in perspective, the Walthers list for these was $39.98.

Mark

Unfortunately for Walthers, THEY did not put the price in perspective. Which is a major reason they failed miserably in their marketing efforts. Walthers expected to be able to price their cars 30% higher than better quality cars from Kato and other manufacturers. Of course, it did not help their cause that they had us all trained to wait until any of their products hit the sale flyer at a 50% discount. 

So, if the intent is to enter the mainstream market (presumably why the RailSmith line is being introduced), then price has to be competitive with current comparable products in the N scale market, like the Con-cor Budd cars, or Kato or MT.  What Walthers overcharged for them 10 years ago is irrelevant.  If the marketing plan is to sell 100 PS4140 sleepers a month in foobie paint schemes to collectors, $49 is no problem. But if the purpose of the RailSmith line is to gain a foothold in the mainstream market for passenger cars (ie- with Kato, MT, Con-cor, WoT, Rapido, etc) then the "price-quality" ratio is determined by the broader market, not by a huge mistake made by Walthers a dozen years ago.

[Mark5]

I don't like the high prices but that's where the market is going.

Honestly I think the Walthers cars are some of the best passenger car tooling in N scale to date. I was annoyed that they failed to issue some cars in proto schemes while doing foob schemes but the tooling rocks.

Kato is right up there too. Rapido is the other top notch manufacturer in my opinion (@$59 list currently).

The Centralia cars ($49.95 list) fail for me due to the lack of flush windows (I'm picky about this). The only Con-Cor cars worth discussing are the Budd cars ($41.98 list).

It's going to be VERY hard for anyone to compete with Kato on price - maybe it's because they control their own manufacturing, or the huge volume they do (US prototype is a small percentage of their production) - but for whatever reasons they make great passenger cars at reasonable cost.

(MTL's Heavyweights are awesome and reasonably priced  )

Mark

[coosvalley]

Was just surfing the site, saw this "gem", which is neither an accurate freight car model, nor is it a prototypical paint scheme. All for the low low price of 55$

https://lowellsmith.net/product/6464-475-boston-maine/

But someone said it was a collectors item!

[nickelplate759]

Was just surfing the site, saw this "gem", which is neither an accurate freight car model, nor is it a prototypical paint scheme. All for the low low price of 55$

https://lowellsmith.net/product/6464-475-boston-maine/

But someone said it was a collectors item!

If memory serves me right, these DO have a prototype - a Lionel tinplate car.   Although, they aren't quite accurately scaled to the Lionel prototype, in that their roof isn't low enough, the roofwalk is not molded in, they have corner stirrups  and their couplers are too small 
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[coosvalley]

If memory serves me right, these DO have a prototype - a Lionel tinplate car.   Although, they aren't quite accurately scaled to the Lionel prototype, in that their roof is too low and their couplers and wheel flanges are too small 
(Attachment Link)

Well, I guess I was wrong, sorta!

Models of models, I did not consider that....

There is a B&M car which is sorta similar, but it was a one off paint scheme testbed..

[peteski]

If memory serves me right, these DO have a prototype - a Lionel tinplate car.   Although, they aren't quite accurately scaled to the Lionel prototype, in that their roof isn't low enough, the roofwalk is not molded in, they have corner stirrups  and their couplers are too small 

Yes,
MTL, in the mid-90s, produced a series of N scale cars which were replicas of Lionel models.  They even came in orange cardboard boxes imitating the Lionel boxes.  There is a vendor in New England area who has a large cache of these cars for sale. But even though he has them priced to sell, there don't seem to be many buyers.  One of these collector items which seems to have been a dud.

Here is more info about the car: http://www.trovestar.com/generic/zoom.php?id=129905
And other cars in the series: http://www.trovestar.com/general/Search/callback.php?SearchString=lionel&user_id=0&Collection=4&AdvancedFlag=0

[mmagliaro]

Does anyone know for sure whether the "purchase of tooling" (it is in quotes on his website) means Lowell Smith has the tooling in his hands, or does it just mean he has purchased the rights to have the Chinese factory ship the resulting models to his address?  The quotes seem to imply the latter, and he will have to place minimum orders, one assumes in the thousands, to get his products made.  In which case, I would expect distribution to be wider than the current limited edition model he works on.  I assume he has planned wider distribution, regardless of how the cars are being manufactured, and that was the purpose of creating a separate "RailSmith" line.

I bought so many of these cars during the Walthers "going out of the N scale passenger business" sale(s) that he will have to do one heck of a paint job to get me interested in any of those (at $49, anyway).  But if he comes out with a diner, or a baggage dorm, or some such, might be interested.

In the comments section on Lowell's page, he mentions in passing (to another question),
"And you will be delighted to know that I purchased all the assets including art and paint specs. "

That sounds to me like he actually owns the molds, and everything else.  "All the assets" is "all the assets", after all.

[peteski]

In the comments section on Lowell's page, he mentions in passing (to another question),
"And you will be delighted to know that I purchased all the assets including art and paint specs. "

That sounds to me like he actually owns the molds, and everything else.  "All the assets" is "all the assets", after all.

Hmmm . . . if the tooling resides with some company in China (as has been the case with the model RR products molded in China for the last couple of decades or more), then I'm not sure what the exact meaning of the word "owns" is.