InterMountain N scale F units

[unittrain]

I bet most people have given up on IM as waiting half a decade for a pre order is crazy, just order the extra 8 locomotives and get on with it I'm sure they can be sold! It's possible to that they are not in good standing with the manufacturers who knows, all as I know is that if you announce and never deliver people give up pre ordering at some point.

[w neal]

I'm afraid I can only add to the above point. Intermountain, just go ahead and invest in the other 8 or 15 Bs, especially if they have the new frame. They will sell. Plenty of people like me who never pre-order or forget to.

[Missaberoad]

I have an FP9 ordered for Algoma Central.  Hopefully this is a sign that those may finally be in the pipeline as well.  Though something tells me they aren't in high demand (marked TBD)

Can always chase down one of the earlier ones, Not sure if it was a special run or what the story is...

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/VERY-RARE-InterMountain-N-Scale-Locomotive-DCC-FP9-Diesel-Algoma-Central-1752-/172590580676?hash=item282f3343c4:g:2vgAAOSwDKtY1Bc3

[Cumbo2000]

So I asked my contact at Intermountain how the reservations were holding up and when I might expect them.  This was the response:

It is time to place the PO's with the factory for our next run of
N Scale F7A's and B's.

Bill,

Could you ask your contact about the status of the proposed F3s as they are all listed with delivery as TBD. These also will have the new frame, DCC/Sound, etc.

Bob Witt

[w neal]

Can always chase down one of the earlier ones, Not sure if it was a special run or what the story is...

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/VERY-RARE-InterMountain-N-Scale-Locomotive-DCC-FP9-Diesel-Algoma-Central-1752-/172590580676?hash=item282f3343c4:g:2vgAAOSwDKtY1Bc3

Not a special run, just a regular one. They just disappeared quickly as they were greatly sought after.

[jagged ben]

I bet most people have given up on IM as waiting half a decade for a pre order is crazy, just order the extra 8 locomotives and get on with it I'm sure they can be sold! It's possible to that they are not in good standing with the manufacturers who knows, all as I know is that if you announce and never deliver people give up pre ordering at some point.

Indeed, I hope they have not gotten themselves into a vicious cycle. 

[mu26aeh]

Can always chase down one of the earlier ones, Not sure if it was a special run or what the story is...

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/VERY-RARE-InterMountain-N-Scale-Locomotive-DCC-FP9-Diesel-Algoma-Central-1752-/172590580676?hash=item282f3343c4:g:2vgAAOSwDKtY1Bc3

I could do that, but reason for this order to me is they are doing 1755, which is now on the Gettysburg & Northern under PREX ( Pioneer Rail Corp ).  I custom painted Gettysburg 105 and 107 myself, and will add 1755 to the roster after patching it out.  Of course I could get one from the other release and renumber it but if IMRC is going to do that work for me, and I can get it with the new chassis and possibly sound ( I preordered the DCC/non sound version, may have to change that) then I will wait to see if they do that.

Here is picture of the unit

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3044812

[Missaberoad]

I could do that, but reason for this order to me is they are doing 1755, which is now on the Gettysburg & Northern under PREX ( Pioneer Rail Corp ).  I custom painted Gettysburg 105 and 107 myself, and will add 1755 to the roster after patching it out.  Of course I could get one from the other release and renumber it but if IMRC is going to do that work for me, and I can get it with the new chassis and possibly sound ( I preordered the DCC/non sound version, may have to change that) then I will wait to see if they do that.

Here is picture of the unit

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3044812

Makes perfect sense then...

If you do have to go the renumbering route thankfully its the one Algoma Central scheme that decals are available for. (unfortunately its a scheme that didn't exist until Algoma Central ceased to be a railroad) 

[nkalanaga]

Peteski:  "But then why IM doesn't simply order that 15 extra models?"

Now THAT is a good question, and like others, I agree.  Maybe they, like many other companies, have developed an aversion, bordering on obsessive, to having any inventory of any kind?  The factory I work at is like that, and would rather run out of parts, miss shipments, and annoy customers, than risk having a part sitting unneeded, even for a short time.  And we're talking parts that are used on a continuing basis, not custom work or irregular orders. 

[thomasjmdavis]

We don't know that they don't order extras.  What we know is that they have some minimum for presold orders before they order ANY.  So, it could be, for instance (making up numbers out of my head), that they want 200 presold, out of a total order of 300, before placing the order with their factory.  I recall a few years ago, when they ended up with a huge supply of left over shells, that ended up on eBay going for cheap through a couple of resellers- I could never figure out how they ended up with so many extra body shells.  But maybe that put the fear of inventory into them. 

The problem they will have if they cancel B units is that many of the folks ordering A units will want A-B sets, and not more A unit singles running around.  So if IM cancels the Bs, they will end up with pre-order cancellations of As.  And with their current policy, no hobby shop has any of their product available at Christmas, or for those days when someone walks into a hobby shop looking for a birthday present for their spouse.  So all those folks buy Kato and Atlas engines instead.  Or worse (from the IM point of view), an entire Kato train with some Unitrack.

I would own 3 times as many IM locomotives as I do if they had been available when I had the money to buy locomotives.  But they weren't.  So I have Katos instead.  I think I have a total of 8 IMs, one of which is still on a shelf waiting for a C&EI shell to come up on eBay or someone to do C&EI decals.

[drgw0579]

I do have some answers, but have been preoccupied with real life things    My contact is too busy to write a formal response, but here's my interpretation of the situation from previous discussions...

It is 8 to 15 additional units across 16 road names, that adds up, let's say close to 200 units. All of these B unit roads ARE small runs.  Some of the A units have very nice numbers and justify the overall investment.  IMR would like to give the modelers who do want them both an opportunity for them to be made.  The economics are such that InterMountain must be careful how production is managed.  InterMountain (and all of your favorite hobby suppliers) are not big companies in the grand scheme of things. Not even medium sized.  If IMR ties up resources in slow selling inventory, that prevents them from bringing new products to market.  Their factory, one of the very few in the world that is independent, also supplies models for more of the hobby than anyone here can imagine. They feel they have a very good relationship with them.  Everybody gets mostly the same terms; IMR chooses to try to give modelers more variety than other suppliers.  Sometimes it works great, sometimes they get stuck in a dilemma like this.  They WILL make more units than are currently reserved,  the SD40-2 proved the market is out there. But they would like to gauge which roads will sell and which will be slow.  "Reservations" are really the only way there is to get more than a gut feel. Nobody will buy (at least at a decent price) a B unit when the A is not available.  They prefer not to make you buy an A-B set like most other manufacturers, although that could be a consideration in the future.  And unlike a few others, IMR does not dump unsold models onto the market, thereby screwing dealers who are trying to sell products at a price where they can afford to stay in business.

I will ask specifically about the F3s and the FTs.  They usually don't like to schedule successive runs of the similar locomotives so that the dealers and modelers and their credit cards get a relief; that's really the only holdup now to work through the backlog of planned releases.

These are my interpretations of the situation.  Not a statement from InterMountain.

Bill Kepner

[mcjaco]

It is difficult to believe that the profit margin is so tight that being short by only 8-15 will be enough to cancel the production run. Does that mean that they also have very few in a  production run that 15 models make a difference?  If the run is only 100 models then 15 is a substantial shortfall. But if the run is 5,000 then 15 is not a significant shortfall.

" Thankfully, all we need is about 8 to 15 more per road name to get them done. "

I'm reading that as 8-15 per.  Not total needed.  That's pretty significant numbers.

[Ngineer]

I ordered an F7A Great Northern - Big Sky Blue and an F7B Northern Pacific in the summer of 2014. As well as covered hoppers (Tabor).

Oh, and CB&Q box cars in August 2013.

Guess what?

I am still waiting.

   Javier

[nkalanaga]

I'm also waiting for those CB&Q boxcars, as well as a set of CP Rail cars from a few months earlier.  I had a lot more reserved, but IM has either cancelled, or moved to TBD, every other car I wanted, except the Hi-Cube cars announced last fall.  I don't really expect to see those.

So far that adds up to over $350 in cancelled freight cars, not counting the 60 ft boxcars from Red Caboose (sold to anther company), and the 60 ft undec flats that simply "disappeared" from their pages.

It's hard to give my money to someone that won't sell me anything!

[Missaberoad]

Still not in the SD45-2 delay ballpark That took around 8 years to see the light of day... ...and they couldn't even get EL grey or DMIR maroon right 

IMRC Does things at their own pace and we can either buy when the opportunity is there or complain on the internet