New from Walthers in N!

[Bremner]

I can use a SW1200 or two....on fire sale since I will have to strip them and paint them and add number boards....

[TiVoPrince]

I can use a SW1200 or two....on fire sale since I will have to strip them and paint them and add number boards....

Reminding
me that I have an in progress pair of SW1200Es lingering in a bin after sucessful light pakage surgery, because I never quite figured out how to cobble together proper numberboards...

[Brakie]

If Walthers put as much effort updating the tooling for their N scale cars and engines that they did in HO, they would be some of the best cars out there.

Daniel,That depends..There are HO modelers that scorn Walthers freight cars since "they're not up to today's standards".

I wonder who the jerk or jerks are that goes about sitting standards in any scale?

I suspect they're sitting the standards for them,that little mouse in their pocket and their few "friends"...

[sirenwerks]

That being said, I've heard there's been some structural changes at Walther's in the past few weeks.

Unfortunately, that probably doesn't mean offing the 'family' structure that seems to be dragging the company into the ditch. It's a nice touchy-feely ideal, the family run enterprise, but the aspect of giving someone a job that's not necessarily qualified beyond the paper, someone that really doesn't get 'it', means woe to the customer. It reminds me of my days working with grassroots nonprofits; the boards would bring in well-meaning volunteers (usually friends of friends) that, more often than not, lacked the skills needed to really do the job at hand, just barely warm bodies.

Walthers' trend-driven foray into social media is point-in-case. It's one-way communication (them telling us whatever they want to say), and the feedback trying to get in the door through Facebook is getting treated with a 'la-la-la' reception. More so than in most cases of social media's over-hyped value. The company's not open to hard or soft input from the N scale market and only wants accolades. Despite the VP of Communications having a marketing background, the company continues to treat the N scale market as wanting the same product as the HO market in the same manner - hence the 'if it don't sell in HO it won't sell in N' silliness. I guess they don't teach two-way communication at the school she went to. Which means we'll continue to get trackside shanties instead of large industries and get poorly engineered modular wall systems whose flaws show up even more so in the smaller scale of things, and we'll never see the name trains, even though Kato seems to be doing well with them in N.

Yea, the economy is in the crapper. No need to tell me, as I've only been back to work for a year now after nearly two years off. All the same, Walthers is screwed up and the way it's behaving won't help N scale reach it's potential market share any.

[Bremner]

Reminding
me that I have an in progress pair of SW1200Es lingering in a bin after sucessful light pakage surgery, because I never quite figured out how to cobble together proper numberboards...

I was going to start with DA steam number boards and a file

[lock4244]

Someone else needs to do the FA1/FB1 and FA2/FB2 in N. I'd have ordered an SW1200 from the current release if they'd done it in a more current CN noodle scheme as opposed to the 50's era Green and Gold, which was a very short lived image for CN when compared to the noodle. Less than 10 years vs. 40+. Sigh...

[Rossford Yard]

Whenever I read these threads, I just recall how lucky I feel that Walthers allowed me to build a nice urban themed layout with their many N scale structures, nearly all of which I have used to good effect, including the most wonderful turntable anyone could imagine, among others.

I guess the "what have you done for me lately" attitude applies in N scale........

[TiVoPrince]

I was going to start with DA steam number boards and a file

After
much though I had intended to use the DA parts to create a mould and embed 402 LEDs in clear resin.  After a dozen or more attempts I gave up and still on the lookout a more feasable solution...

[lock4244]

Whenever I read these threads, I just recall how lucky I feel that Walthers allowed me to build a nice urban themed layout with their many N scale structures, nearly all of which I have used to good effect, including the most wonderful turntable anyone could imagine, among others.

I guess the "what have you done for me lately" attitude applies in N scale........

I think its apt to criticize them for sitting on a lot of tooling when they could be put to better use... like making models. Not so much "what have you done for me lately", but more like "what the heck are you waiting for?".

[bbussey]

Someone else needs to do the FA1/FB1 and FA2/FB2 in N. I'd have ordered an SW1200 from the current release if they'd done it in a more current CN noodle scheme as opposed to the 50's era Green and Gold, which was a very short lived image for CN when compared to the noodle. Less than 10 years vs. 40+. Sigh...

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.

[Brakie]

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.

I agree..Why waste the limited  N Scale tooling dollars on what is already on the market?

I grit my teeth every time I see a copycat product especially in  N.

[Rossford Yard]

I think its apt to criticize them for sitting on a lot of tooling when they could be put to better use... like making models. Not so much "what have you done for me lately", but more like "what the heck are you waiting for?".

Well, they have just reissued many of their long out of stock structures, so I wouldn't call it sitting on them.  As to cars, not many of those have been widely praised here and most forums, have they?  Ditto most locos, albeit I think we all agree they get better every time out of the box.  (literally and figuratively....)  given their general reputation, and possibly  mediocre sales, combined with our customer demands for better tooling (I really doubt their old tooling in most cases would suffice) I can believe that they are reluctant to release stuff, particularly in this economy.

I really don't know the economics of locos and cars, and the only knowledge I have is the complete open book attitude of Frank at I M. While their grain hoppers have sold over a quarter million in both HO and N in the years the tooling has been out, they also said their 60' Flat in N (which I loved) sold only 8K cars over a few runs.  So, I have no idea how the ballast cars or passenger cars they have done (and which appear popular) have sold.  But figure 8000 cars, at $20 retail and that's $160K retail MSRP, and probably 80K for Walthers total.  What profit could be made on that?

Ditto with structures, as a few dealers have told me that Walthers re-runs them when they have 300 back orders.  Even at $40-80, that's not a lot of money for them at the mfg level.  $12-24K at retail?  Half that to Walthers?  Would you re-run a kit for a max intake of $12K, and possible profit of $4-6K?

I hope they stay family run and the great grandkids live up to the legacy of producing model train items because overall, they love them.  Because if a corporate type gets in, as I think happened at Lionel years back, we might really have something to complain about.

[Nato]

                    I agree with Bryan,why waste money on new tooling for Alco locos when Walthers has the LL tooling and could reissue it. My bigger gripe is only a few limited paint schemes with each new batch run so many modelers who would buy cannot find their favorite road or era. I do agree bring back cars with upgraded tooling if the tooling still exists. I would like more of the old outside braced 1917-? era 50FT. double door box cars, especially the ones with the Automobile loading end doors,but not so solidly glued together that they couldn't be kitbashed. I'am just glad I had a wad of cash to be able to buy Life Likely(Like) diesels when I could in their nifty old 1930's late 40's and 50's paint schemes,especially the E Units. No one else will ever do original Seaboard Citrus scheme on passenger locos execpt maybe BLI at a high price. Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[Wardie]

I would love to see Walthers re-isue the Life-Like FA1/FB1, FA2/FB2, C liner, E7A/B, BL-2, SW-8, and SW 9/1200 on a regular basis. Granted Life-Like flooded the market with the FA/FB's shortly before selling the tooling, but some roads have long been sold out.

[mcjaco]

50% mark up?  That's not likely.  It used to 40% on most stuff when I worked in the hobby sales.  That was 10-15 years ago when we didn't have limited runs.

At $160,000 you'd be talking all of $64,000 at 40%.  There's not as much money in some of this as you guys would like to think.  Then again, we rehash this every few months.....