New suggestions for MTL

[Puddington]

Pressure differential hoppers... CP, CN, PGE, BCR.......Especially the PGE CP type.....

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=640587

http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cn374225&o=cn

[up1950s]

To add to your greatly received heavyweight cars , a horse express car .

[Puddington]

It's a fait d' complete that they'll do a horse express Richie; I spent 40 hours scratchbuilding one so there must be one RTR model coming... Isn't that the way it works ?

[up1950s]

And they could do a circus lettered one . Many roads had them , REA , UP , PRR and more . Not exact for each road , but that's the norm . MOW would be a logical choice with the many doors .

[Bob Bufkin]

Cars for hauling show scenery come close to the horse cars.  Slightly different doors but does have the end door.

[unclepete2013]

I am going to pester you for more of those circus train sets.

Here is my wish list-

Reasonably priced semi trailers ($10 or less). Its getting expensive for this inter-modal train.
DODX Flat cars
Generic MOW equipment - Tie remover, ballast regulator, ballast tamper, pick ups (these would be awesome, very generic) and etc
Tanks M1A1 and a cheap price, Hummers, 6X6's, etc
89' flats that the CP uses for the pipe trains... those are beyond cool on the mainline.

[SkipGear]

You seem to think all flats are 89' and carried TOFC/COFC. I don't know I agree with your cautionary approach (it would be great to fulfill ALL of my piggybackin' needs at once) but let's not lump all flats into one generalized category.

BTW, I say yes to gons (those that ran in the 60s). I just bought numerous BLMA cars and Athearn mill gons. Most of the othes on the market are too new. I'd buy MTL if they were the right length.

Note the other topic by Brian B on the ESM gon's moving slow. There has been a glut of gondola's in the past year. I think I was the only one who bought the BLMA gons from our stock. The ESM gon's have moved but very slow. Atlas and Athearn had 4 types of gon's hit within a couple months.

The average paying customer doesn't know the difference in 89' flat cars. I know it is a slap in the face to guys that do know the difference but the majority of the buying public looks at a road name or load first and the details later. This is not a scale specific comment, it happens in all scales. The avearage majority is who will be paying for the run and creating profit for the manufacture, not those of us who are detail oriented.

[sirenwerks]

Note the other topic by Brian B on the ESM gon's moving slow. There has been a glut of gondola's in the past year. I think I was the only one who bought the BLMA gons from our stock. The ESM gon's have moved but very slow. Atlas and Athearn had 4 types of gon's hit within a couple months.

The average paying customer doesn't know the difference in 89' flat cars. I know it is a slap in the face to guys that do know the difference but the majority of the buying public looks at a road name or load first and the details later. This is not a scale specific comment, it happens in all scales. The average majority is who will be paying for the run and creating profit for the manufacture, not those of us who are detail oriented.

Your discussion on flats is apples and oranges, as I was recommending a 53'6" flat, not a 89-footer, so you can't lump the two together by saying 'don't do a flat'.

As for the gons, look at Bryan's selection of cars, they have dates in the 50s or prior or post-1970. For those of us modeling the 60s (accurately) the cars Bryan was going to release (the late shadow keystone PRR cars) were cancelled. So I'm buying more Athearn cars (instead of ESM cars) because they represent certain prototypes (GN, NP, CN, CP) well and fit in my time frame and are available for purchase.

You're generalizing. You can't say gons aren't selling. Craig's are. But you may be able to be more specific and say gons of a certain time frame or certain railroads aren't, which may (or may not) be proven true by an inventory of what Bryan has left. Bryan's products are more popular with modelers that care about detail, like dates, so there's a strong possibility it was simply a choice of paint schemes that are keeping the cars on the shelf, not that no one wants the body style (these cars aren't available as undecs, which may have been an indicator of my notion).

[wm3798]

Tony makes a good point...  The average goon is going to look at Craig or Bryan's gon tipping the scales at $20 or more, then look at a Micro Trains car at around $10-14, and won't even notice the length of the car or the inaccuracy of the paint.  If you read the papers, that's kind of the world we're living in right now.

I'm stuck in the mud because this great stuff is coming out, but even if I sell off the foobies to buy the newbies, I'd have to sell 2 or 3 and in some cases 4 cars to replace one.  And this won't be easy either, because it's very much a buyer's market out there.

Really, MT is in the catbird seat.  They can keep spitting out the existing tooling in the occasional new paint scheme, or even just new numbers on the old schemes, and keep the cash flowing with lower cost, lower priced cars.  As long as they keep the new mid-pro wheels and knuckle couplers, they'll be able to ride out the recession better than most.

Lee

[sirenwerks]

Well, in that case Lee, I think MTL should just print waffles on boxcars and that should be good enough for everyone wanting those cars. Right? 

[wcfn100]

The average paying customer doesn't know the difference in 89' flat cars.

They wouldn't know the difference between covered hoppers either, yet it was your first suggestion.  If N scale has enough of anything, it's covered hoppers.

I looked up the Trinity car and it looks just like three hoppers Atlas already makes.  One of which is part of the Trainman line which can be had for $14.  So where's the room for a new one?


Jason

[wm3798]

Well, in that case Lee, I think MTL should just print waffles on boxcars and that should be good enough for everyone wanting those cars. Right? 

Don't misunderstand... What's good enough for those of us who pay attention is different than what's good enough for the large majority of model purchasers.  A kid getting started, a guy on limited retirement income, or a Family Guy on a budget isn't going to part with more money than they have to to get close to what they want.  Sure, there will be exceptions, where you want what you want, and you'll scrimp and save to get it, but there's such a large segment of the population out there dealing with dwindling incomes and increasing expenses, hobby dollars are going to be getting stretched as far as they can.  As such, you might introduce bestest and mostest model, but if you don't hit a popular price point, you're going to be sitting on them for awhile, which is probably what ESM is (sadly) experiencing with the G26.

If Bryan's carrying a heavy inventory, his best bet might be just slash the prices there, and move them along, converting them to cash that can be plowed into other more market-worthy projects.  Obviously there's going to be a hesitation in doing that, being as there are tooling and other costs that he probably needs to amortize over the balance of the current run and probably a part of the next, but at the end of the day, they're not doing any good sitting on his shelf.

I just looked over at Atlas, and the only thing they're announcing in September is 12 more numbers on their coalveyor in one paint scheme.  It's simply not a good time for small manufacturers in a sector entirely dependent on disposable income to be putting a lot of investment in new tooling.

Lee

[lock4244]

Pressure differential hoppers... CP, CN, PGE, BCR.......Especially the PGE CP type.....

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=640587

http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cn374225&o=cn

More interest in the CN cars, but I'd gladly take either.

[cfritschle]

Joe,

Have you considered a semi-tractor to go with your trailers?  We really don't have much for the 1990s through early 2000s time period.  And, with all the N scale intermodal equipment being released or soon to be released, there are going to be some real bottlenecks at the terminals because of the lack of trucks.   

A Kenworth or Peterbilt would probably be the easiest to get licensed, and my vote would be the Kenworth T800.  They were first produced in the late 1980s, and they are still rolling off the assembly lines.

Carter

[SkipGear]

They wouldn't know the difference between covered hoppers either, yet it was your first suggestion.  If N scale has enough of anything, it's covered hoppers.

I looked up the Trinity car and it looks just like three hoppers Atlas already makes.  One of which is part of the Trainman line which can be had for $14.  So where's the room for a new one?


Jason

I only request the Trinity car because it is visually larger than any of the cars produced now and it's a Trinity car. No Trinity covered hoppers are represented in the market right now, meaning nobody is going to paint TILX on the side of an ACF car. The trainman car is much too small. I've tried the ACF 5700's as stand-ins and they just don't cut it, that and I have to paint them for TILX markings. It is more than just different hatch style, rivet line, or construction style, they are visually larger and the only car that is going to get painted in TILX.  They are used in ethonal service around here in blocks of the TILX scheme. I really just want something that is not an ACF car.

 I'm not really nit picky with details on modern cars but something that visually stands out in a train, like waffle side box cars, excess height 60' cars, or for older cars, the wagontops, and Milwaukee ribsides boxcars is what the average person notices. They are visually different than the other cars in the train. The things that stand out as unique is what I remember and what I want to model. The mundane doesn't sell, the unique does, it's as simple as that. I am still waiting for Athearn to run the Ethonal tankers in a plain TILX scheme but they can't bring themselves to do it. I would buy every road number made if they would, but I doubt many others would sell. I wouldn't order many more than for our store beyond the ones I was buying.

My wife and son watched a train the other day while I was at work. My son is 7 and know's his train cars. The report I got back was: "Dad, we saw the SD45 that you built leading, with 4085, 4072 behind, a bunch of centerbeams, a string of Ortner hoppers, some Railboxes, those big TILX and Verasun hoppers, some tanks, and some empty gondolas on the end. He picked out the Ortners and the Trinity cars from the train because they were visually unique. Everything else was a generic car to him. He can pick out more cars in a train than the average 30 year old and that was his report.