0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
It's one of the great tragedies of North American railroad preservation that not a single TurboTrain was saved. Nothing. They were all scrapped because they were seen as too new. Everyone at the time wanted to save F-units and not a lot else. The Turbo is still the fastest production train in North America - 170.8 MPH on the PRR in 1967 and 140.6 MPH on the CN in 1976. If you love the Turbo like I do, you should definitely put one on a museum track if you don't have a need to run it.Some people have criticized Rapido for spending money on railway preservation. I was seven years old when the last Turbo was retired. When I became an adult I was determined to do my part to save the trains I love. So we spearheaded the saving of LRC 6917, we are restoring an old VIA sleeping car, and last year, at the "spur of the moment," we saved an RDC that was about to be scrapped. We couldn't let all the RDCs stored in Moncton be junked. Info on the RDC and Edmundston can be found here:https://rapidotrains.com/saving-6133-update/https://rapidotrains.com/edmundston/My wife, Sidura, is a saint. In 2010 the recession was in full swing and we were completely broke. VIA gave the TRHA a week and said they had to put a $3000 deposit on 6917 or it would be scrapped. The TRHA did not yet have a bank account. Sidura agreed to take $3000 from our line of credit and give it to VIA to save 6917. I wish we could save more, but Rapido only has the budget to work on a couple of full-size projects at once. When 6133 and Edmundston are no longer costing us many arms and legs, we will look to see what other pieces of Canadian passenger train history we can save.-Jason
I for one see no issues with preserving real rail equipment if given the chance and available capital. I applaud your efforts!! I would like to see Rapido refine its N scale marketing approach. I think this would improve your pre orders and allow you to bring products to market faster. My express fleet took quite an upgrade when my baggage cars arrived!
Strangely, there are some model railroaders who have absolutely no interest in real trains and think that preservation is a waste of time. We occasionally have to gong Facebook messages that are rabidly against our preservation efforts. People think that Rapido models would be half the price but we're spending all our money on "toys" - i.e. saving real trains. Clearly these guys have no idea of the finances involved but it doesn't stop them trying to tell us we're doing everything wrong.I am very interested to hear your thoughts on N scale marketing. Currently we advertise in NSM and NSR, as well as devoting ad space in MRN and RMC to N scale models. Electronically, we advertise N scale models in MRH when there is a deadline. We also do YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and posts here. When models arrive, we send them for review to both NSM and NSR, but of course by then we're usually almost sold out or completely sold out.The only thing I think we're missing is more show appearances, but shows cost us a mint. It costs the same to do one show as it does to advertise on the back cover of NSM for a whole year. What else do you suggest? I am definitely all ears. Our orders for the Turbo are great as were the Osgood Bradleys, but it took us quite a while to build up the baggage car order and we've only had about 400 orders for our rebuilt 1400-series GMD-1, and we need closer to 1000 to make them, 750 at a bare minimum. I'm not sure what else we can do. I don't want to make an extra 350 locomotives in the hope that they will sell. They won't.Thanks in advance,Jason
Our challenge, and I don't mind saying this, is that N scale is dominated by two major manufacturers: Micro-Trains and Kato. We would never be able to match the output or the pricing of those two companies. We just don't have the resources. We're a relatively small player, even in HO. Well, we're not that small any more. We're probably in the lower end of the top 10 in terms of annual sales. But we're still a young company (13 years) so we don't have deep pockets like some of our competitors that have been around for 50 years or more.We've been asked to do The Canadian in N scale. That would cost us well over $250,000 to tool and the set would retail for not much less than the HO set - probably $1000-$1200. Taking into account wholesale discounts and product costs, we would need to sell at least 1000 trains to make it worthwhile. And the set would take up basically all our tooling budget for a year.In the meantime, between spending the tooling money and bringing it out (which would take about two years), Kato can come out with a "close enough" Canadian using existing tooling for $700 retail. And then we lose half of our orders and we get kneecapped on the project. When you have a lot of manufacturers splitting the market like you do in HO, it actually makes it easier to survive. No one manufacturer has dominance in any given part of the market, except maybe Bachmann in the entry level category. But in N scale it's the two big guys with the lion's share and then everyone else is fighting over the remaining bit of pie. So it's certainly a challenge for us, both in choosing what to bring out and then doing it in a way that both appeals to N scalers and makes us money.Hopefully the 8600s in N scale do almost as well as the Osgood Bradleys. -Jason
Brian, Rapido is not the only manufacturer that makes us wait.Look at MTL and their heavyweights passenger cars. They have a great many roads and only release one or two cars every so often. There are road names that have not been completed here as well. Perhaps they spread them out so that we can rest our wallets for a bit.Rick
JasonOk, here is an idea. Wooden passenger cars circa 1900. Full size 72-80 ft cars. Will they be an instant hit like the Osgood Bradleys? Probably not. But you could pull an MT and release a new one every couple of months for almost forever with all the different styles. And then the different roadnames on those styles.
I haven't ordered a Turbo Train yet, but probably will before it's too late. This Southern Pacific modeller has no use for it on his layout, ...
http://wx4.org/to/foam/sp/locos/visitors/id1899turbo.jpg
Jason,I really appreciate how open and honest you are with the model railroad cummunity. It helps me understand the logic that goes into your business decisions, from the choice of products you bring to market to the need to rely on the dreaded preorder business model. If your customers understand your reality, it helps remove the nagging feeling that you and your crew must be miserable, heartless robber barons because you won't produce this or that model, and insist that I preorder...Your online presence is excellent, and your videos and delightful and informative. Your products are outstanding. Now, about that Canadian... There was some hope deep in my soul that Rapido would fill that void in this CP and passenger train enthusiast's heart, but my head knows this is a long shot. I'm OK with this. Really. I am a MODEL railroader so I'm working on a resin cast version from modified Con Cor originals. This will be about the fifth version of this train that I've tackled in my N scale career, and it's coming along nicely if I do say so myself, although the dome portion of the Park and Skyline cars is currently an unresolved dilemma. You might be interested to know that they are very much based on what I can learn from your HO model of the train. (Incidentally, I am (prepurhasing) your individual HO Canadian cars as they become available, just 'cause they are so... Canadian. I hope you plan to eventually do them all so I can complete my 'showroom consist'.)However, if you ever change your mind on the N scale Canadian, I would like you to know that I, personally, will not demand that you present us with a "Canadian in a box" as you did in HO. I realize this would be a huge commitment of money and resources on Rapido's part. I am patient. I can wait. I've waited for years; I can wait a couple more no problem. I would be perfectly happy if you decided to produce, over two or three years, the seven different cars in the consist. You could start with the Park and Skyline because that would solve my "unresolved dilemma", follow on with the Manor (because it's the last of the flat top cars I haven't started on), and then you could replace my Chateaus, dining cars, coaches and baggage cars as your schedule would allow. I've got the U series tourist sleepers; you don't need to worry about that. In some seriousness, and respecting your much greater knowledge of the industry, I don't really see the need to produce the entire train in one release. I would think there are at least a few N scalers who might be interested in one or two cars out of the seven for their needs, or those that want something shorter (or longer) than a full 12 cars consist, and it would lessen the financial strain for those that what the entire train. For example, I would need about 1 and 1/2 Canadians; a full 12 car consist and enough extras for the partially re-equipped Dominion.But enough unrestrained begging. How about a minibox? Or a wood 'van'?Love your spirit Rapido, including your commitment to 1:1 scale preservation.Geoff
Author
Topic: Rapido N Turbo Train schemes and prices (Read 9645 times)
