Weatherers look out! MTL to offer preweathered cars.

[Sokramiketes]

Is MTL rolling stock piling up at anyone else's LHS?  The monthly releases sure are at Des Plaines Hobbies these days. Interesting that MTL has to resort to weathering extraneous inventory in order to move it...   More signs of slipping market share I suppose.

[Nato]

  Yes the cars look pretty good, but hard to tell from lo rez photos. Some 40 foot box cars survived ito the early start of the tagger era,but almost all the ones that I saw inperson had no black "Be Specific " slogans, these were either faided away or not applyed by that era, I can't vouch for Grande cars even though they might have been viewable at my local railyard ("ROPER"). I agree what a bad way to use up excess invintory. Why not produce road names wanted, or smaller runs of MOW cars , remember the hard to get Green UP MOW tank car of a few years ago,and yes we do need Zed Scale body mount couplers, lower ride height etc. Loads on cars are nice, but do the tiedowns etc.                                               Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[asarge]

Is MTL rolling stock piling up at anyone else's LHS?  The monthly releases sure are at Des Plaines Hobbies these days. Interesting that MTL has to resort to weathering extraneous inventory in order to move it...   More signs of slipping market share I suppose.

Everything is starting to pile up Skibbe. N scale loco sales have about completely died over the last few weeks. The last 2 months releases from MTL have been really stagnant. Course they really haven;t offered any releases that our customer mix wanted. Alot of times we will order extra's of models we think will sell well and usually we get rid of them within a couple of months. But nothing good has come out except the log cars and even those are sitting around. I personbally feel it's the economy, especially in the last 2 weeks.

[Sokramiketes]

Is MTL rolling stock piling up at anyone else's LHS?  The monthly releases sure are at Des Plaines Hobbies these days. Interesting that MTL has to resort to weathering extraneous inventory in order to move it...   More signs of slipping market share I suppose.

Everything is starting to pile up Skibbe. N scale loco sales have about completely died over the last few weeks. The last 2 months releases from MTL have been really stagnant. Course they really haven;t offered any releases that our customer mix wanted. Alot of times we will order extra's of models we think will sell well and usually we get rid of them within a couple of months. But nothing good has come out except the log cars and even those are sitting around. I personbally feel it's the economy, especially in the last 2 weeks.

Hmm... economy isn't going to help now, but it seems like we have 1 or 2 of everything from the past 2-3 years of MTL releases left.  IE this started before the slowdown.  Compared to Atlas, Intermountain, Athearn etc. it just seems to be a higher percentage sticking around and eating shelf space. 

[bicknell]

Everything is starting to pile up Skibbe. N scale loco sales have about completely died over the last few weeks. The last 2 months releases from MTL have been really stagnant. Course they really haven;t offered any releases that our customer mix wanted. Alot of times we will order extra's of models we think will sell well and usually we get rid of them within a couple of months. But nothing good has come out except the log cars and even those are sitting around. I personbally feel it's the economy, especially in the last 2 weeks.

I do wonder about the economy, I think that has all of us rethinking our purchases, however.....

In the last 12 months or so I have seen only a few things I wanted to purchase (locomotives or rolling stock).  Some of this is just road names and eras, and thus specific to me, but at the same time it seems like the manufacturers have just produced much less interesting stuff recently.  As a result I've been spending more time on scenery, adding decoders to existing locomotives, and things like that.

Perhaps the manufacturers are just anticipating the economy, or sales have slowed enough they are seeing it and cutting back.  That said, having only boring, non-interesting stuff in the pipeline is not the way to turn around the trend.

[asarge]

Personally I can't complain Leo. MTL did the Cameo Cars, Atlas finally did the 2 bay hoppers and is doing the C&O Cabs. This year has been pretty good for me. Before the August Releases MTL was still hit or miss with us. But we usually sold out of a few of each months releases within 60 days. (We don't order massive quantities). Now, they haven't been going anywhere. Even the Railbox Runner packs are sitting and they have always been popular with our modellers.

However, over the last month things have gotten almost scary round here. The new Atlas FGE Boxcars were popular the last couple of times out and I don't think we've sold but one since the latest releases came out and no CSX, which is pretty popular round here in N.

I personally think there is some stagnation out there; just not sure what's causing it.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

The railbox cars sitting around makes perfect sense...

You can get the Atlas Trainman RBOX car (that's the correct body, the correct height, blah blah blah) for a cheaper price.

That's a no-brainer.

[bicknell]

The railbox cars sitting around makes perfect sense...

You can get the Atlas Trainman RBOX car (that's the correct body, the correct height, blah blah blah) for a cheaper price.

That's a no-brainer.

The fox valley rbox is also cheaper, and has better detail and painting.  I did a review of those a while back.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Did you? I'd like to add those to the list:http://conrail1285.com/news.asp?storyid=52

[bicknell]

Did you? I'd like to add those to the list:http://conrail1285.com/news.asp?storyid=52

http://blip.tv/file/889537

5:38 in is where it starts.

Probably could have gotten some better pictures.  This was an early episode.

[Chulvis]

Seems to me that N Scale has had its ups and downs this year.

MTL sales have really slid, I'm sorry to say. I'm just not ordering as much as I have in the past because many of them are collecting dust on the shelf. They have the odd hot item but not like it used to be. What they really need to do is retool some of their cars and catch up with the competition in as far as detail and ride height goes. I do not hold their price points in judgment however. Their rolling stock is made in the USA and that just cost more. Write your congressman.


A highlight was the Kato Daylight set. Put aside the stupid DCC thing with the loco and you have a damn good train. The GG1 is awesome and I think we can all be pretty sure the passenger cars will be excellent. Love them or hate them, Kato has established themselves as king of the hill in N Scale passenger cars and I don't think anyone is going to dethrone then anytime soon.

InterMountain will, at some point, release the AC-12, plus they are retooling their passenger car and will be shipping the new milk cars and stock cars soon.


While I've am not a fan of everything Athearn does I do like their latest move towards regional short lines and more focus on vehicles. The new Bombardier cars are excellent. Very nicely done, even if they still have MTL couplers despite the fact that the box says they have McHenry's. The plastic storage boxes are a big improvement over the lame a$$ cardboard junk they were throwing at us for the last five years. I got in the F45 and FP45's today and they are nice. Good runners, good detail. One thing I noticed that I was pretty happy to see is that the undecorated units are not all put together. This will make the painters of the world very happy. Good to see a manufacturer doing this.

Atlas is doing a lot if interesting road names in their rolling stock as well. As asarge pointed out the 2 bay hoppers are just great. Their current preoccupation with regional eastern roads in their locomotive selection is a little long in tooth though. I'd sure like to see them do some western regional locos. There are plenty to choose from.  Don't forget the GP15-1 is coming soon!

One bright spot we have is an influx of new tooling from some new and or newer manufacturers such as Fox Valley, Bluford Shops, Trainworx and Wheels of Time. These guys seem to be paying attention to what the market wants and giving it to us. Perhaps our future?

It's not all bad guys. Keep your chins up. Economy, sure it plays a part in this but we need to remember that 2008 has been a year in which we have seen a pretty big slowdown in product actually making it out of China/wherever to our shores. The Atlas Dash locos and MP15's are pretty far behind their original schedules at the moment. The new Athearn F45/FP45's were 4 months late and the sound units will be 9 months late by the time they get here. Walthers has pushed back the Y3's until November making them a full year late. Lets not forget the Precision Craft Models M1   What a joke! 

Things could be worse. If this current economic crisis does sink us, like our Commander in Chief says it will unless congress signs off on his plan, than the last thing we will be worrying about is trains.

 

[GaryHinshaw]

Well put Chuck.  In my own case, my wish list still far exceeds my available cash, which is how I like it!  I would add the Atlas 5700/5800 hoppers to the list of stellar new products, and I would cite Deluxe Innovations and Red Caboose as good mid-tier companies that I keep an eye on (though the latter seems a bit quiet lately).  With the promise of Kato Aces and DI spines in the coming year, I'm guessing my balance sheet will continue to trend negative for some time to come.

May you live in interesting times,
Gary

P.S. Do you see any flagging in the demand for MTL truck/couplers?  IMHO their truck tooling is still the best in the business.  I'd love to see them make a 100T (and maybe a 125T) truck.

[Chulvis]

P.S. Do you see any flagging in the demand for MTL truck/couplers?  IMHO their truck tooling is still the best in the business.  I'd love to see them make a 100T (and maybe a 125T) truck.

Hi Gary,
MTL trucks/couplers continue to be strong sellers. In fact no one even comes close to them. Accumates would be a distant second.

I also wish they would tool up a 100t truck. The fact they haven't seems silly. 

[asarge]

One bright spot we have is an influx of new tooling from some new and or newer manufacturers such as Fox Valley, Bluford Shops, Trainworx and Wheels of Time. These guys seem to be paying attention to what the market wants and giving it to us. Perhaps our future?

Chuck is right on! This maybe a sign of the future for getting some projects done that maybe the big manufacturer's don't want to handle because these guys are able to focus on marketing and producing one or two models at a time. That can result in some savings that might keep the consumers costs from going up so fast.......and these guys seem to focuse on adequate detail without producing beauty queens.

[NorsemanJack]

My guess is that these will be gobbled up by the collectors and speculators, who will in turn report "book values" in excess of $100 per car while trying to sell them for $50 as part of a desperation estate sale blamed on the economy.  It's kinda like the housing bubble, except it's the Micro-trains bubble.

Regarding the reports of slow moving MT sales, I think we all need to write Uncle George and request that MT be added to the list of companies needing a piece of that $700 billion bail out plan.  Unlike the poor multi-billion dollar financial firms, I think the fine folks in Medford are much more deserving of some help.  They've kept jobs in America while delivering high quality products/service without the guy at the top getting $100 million dollars in incentives to ensure that he doesn't quit to run Atlas.