TLT, you gotta be kidding...

[BCR 570]

Mike:

The second run will have the corrected door track and the PGE stencilling should be correct as I have done the research and Greg has prepared the artwork.  All they have to do is get the colour right, and we are preparing a paint sample for them.  I am looking forward to seeing them very much.


Tim

[bobcat]

Chris, you're right. But the "tooling" costs for correcting the shell would seem to have been passed along with this run.

Did you really expect that it wouldn't?

Well yeah. It's bad press to so flagrantly pass on the cost of their original gaff to the consumer. Sometimes you gotta eat a bad meal, when you made it, or go without. It's not like there was a sudden CDN tax hike or the exchange rate spiked. It's a shame, I really wanted some of those cars. Not at that price.

I agree it isn't a pleasant situation, but I bet that nobody over at TLT is getting rich and to eat such a mistake might put them out of business or at least cripple future projects.

[lock4244]

Chris, you're right. But the "tooling" costs for correcting the shell would seem to have been passed along with this run.

Did you really expect that it wouldn't?

Yes I did expect them to eat the added cost. They made some mistakes and had to correct them. A ~20% increase in price will guarantee low sales... as if they weren't pricey to begin with. This is bad business practice. I would love to charge my customers for our mistakes, but I'd be out of business pretty quickly!

IM's infamous gaffe with the F7B was corrected (eventually) and the MSRP did not rise. IMO, this is good business... though it is better to do it right the first time, making right at your cost is a good way to ensure repeat business.

[wcfn100]

"IM's infamous gaffe with the F7B was corrected (eventually) and the MSRP did not rise. IMO, this is good business..."

No retooling involved and IM's plastic is done in house. 

Jason

[Puddington]

Mike:

The second run will have the corrected door track and the PGE stencilling should be correct as I have done the research and Greg has prepared the artwork.  All they have to do is get the colour right, and we are preparing a paint sample for them.  I am looking forward to seeing them very much.


Tim

Dead before they hit the ground........LOL (and if you put four PGE modelers in a room and ask them what the right green is, will you get less than 8 opinions....?) ;D

[Van Horne]

When I commented earlier on the door track, I had been looking at the wrong model!  My bad! 

David

[BCR 570]

Dead before they hit the ground........LOL (and if you put four PGE modelers in a room and ask them what the right green is, will you get less than 8 opinions....?)

Not sure I understand your comment . .

The PGE cars will be Freight Car Red, not green.  We have also submitted artwork for the BCR light green cars with dogwood logogram (early stencil scheme).  For the PGE and BCR schemes, we selected two numbers from the series with the Camel flush door and four numbers from the series with the YSD recessed door to reflect the prototype ratios.

For those commenting about the price, all of the Chinese factories are now passing on the cost of mandatory wage increases, which were brought in by the Chinese government as a requirement of honour trade agreements.  The door track will be fixed; hopefully the ride height can be fixed with a file.

Cheers,

Tim

[Puddington]

Dead before they hit the ground........LOL (and if you put four PGE modelers in a room and ask them what the right green is, will you get less than 8 opinions....?)

Not sure I understand your comment . .

The PGE cars will be Freight Car Red, not green.  We have also submitted artwork for the BCR light green cars with dogwood logogram (early stencil scheme).  For the PGE and BCR schemes, we selected two numbers from the series with the Camel flush door and four numbers from the series with the YSD recessed door to reflect the prototype ratios.

For those commenting about the price, all of the Chinese factories are now passing on the cost of mandatory wage increases, which were brought in by the Chinese government as a requirement of honour trade agreements.  The door track will be fixed; hopefully the ride height can be fixed with a file.

Cheers,

Tim

I stand corrected - I was sure that the PGE cars were also painted in that darn near impossible to copy green - if they were the FC Red's then so much the better.... should have checked my PGE books on cars by this Horton fellow............

[sirenwerks]

For those commenting about the price, all of the Chinese factories are now passing on the cost of mandatory wage increases, which were brought in by the Chinese government as a requirement of honour trade agreements.  The door track will be fixed; hopefully the ride height can be fixed with a file.

Sounds like the perfect time to move production to N. America then. Even if it's to help our fine friends to the south put food on the table, let's keep business in the neighborhood. I'd rather pay that price increase to someone nearby and risk Chinese instability.

[Mark5]

Kinda raises the question, is there a factory in N. America currently capable of doing this? (especially in terms of locomotives)

[Ian MacMillan]

I hope to see a corrected car because I would really be in need of the CP, CV, and CV w/ yellow door for my paper trains.

[Philip H]

Kinda raises the question, is there a factory in N. America currently capable of doing this? (especially in terms of locomotives)

With the dies in hand, there are probably dozens of them.  Plastic injection molding is a common manufacturing process in the U.S.  Now whether the costs would be competitive . . . . .

[central.vermont]

Sounds like a car that should be done by Fox Valley!
Price would be more competitive and done correctly.

Jon

[ljudice]

Moving production to North America sounds like a good idea and supposedly Athearn is doing just that.

However, another manufacturer that used to do injection molding here has recently torn out and sold the copper piping used for cooling their machines for scrap value.

So don't bet that the economics make sense.

[FrankCampagna]

Atlas moved their production of freight cars to the US for a while years back. Then moved it overseas again. There is more than molding. I believe painting is pretty expensive, if you have to pay someone to do it. This is why MT charges more for more complex schemes.

Frank