Powered Chassis

[Mark5]

They and Atlas tend to order parts as a percentage of production rather than a sales forecast for resale, so your odds of finding parts are often in reverse to the popularity of the model and in relationship to the run.   

Atlas used to to that, but I'm not so sure that they've been able to do that since moving to new factories. Parts have been dicey these past 10 years.

[peteski]

Point353,

Yes, I purchased two of the models years ago. I was totally disappointed with the purchase. I understand the N scale products have been discontinued.
The body shell is short, sides warped  the width several scale feet too wide and a RDC falls inside the shell. The trucks are designed  like passenger car trucks, but some of the detail missing
The castings had a lot of air bubbles as well and are cast from a soft material. I believe the photo shows the HO version.

Jim

I  also purchased some N scale kits from Island Modelworks (Kawasaki cars) and was really disappointed.  They had all the problems you described.  It is too bad, because it they were better quality, they could have sold many more.  So they discontinued N scale offerings?  Sounds like one of those things that they themselves were responsible for this (due to quality issues, N scale wasn't a big seller).

Which is weird, because their H0 stuff is much better.

[dem34]

Last I checked Island moved on to doing their N scale offerings through shapeways. I would have tried out their Comet offering if Rapido hadn't announced their own.

[ncbqguy]

When I was the Parts Department Manager at Kato USA I lobbied for what I felt would be a reasonable level of parts to last between production runs using the parts.
The North American need and use for parts is totally different than the Japanese experience....there, for the most part,  N Scale trains are consumable goods with a limited lifetime....kids outgrow their trains and typical homes have no room to “keep stuff’.  They sell “assemblies” including complete decorated bodies which seem to be aimed to repair broken toys and not for hobbyists.
By contrast, many of us have most everything we’ve purchased for our adult hobby and like to keep it running.....even if it is a 40 year old locomotive. We actually can wear out our trains through heavy use. Without permanent layouts wear is not an issue.
Charlie Vlk

[Jim Costello]

As I said before we will stick with using the RDC chassis and be satisfied with working on the trucks etc.  I have plenty of units as I purchased at least a dozen units when they were being sold @$30.00 each many years ago.

I will probably need  4-5 powered units anyway.

Jim