The future of model railroading.

[MountainMan]

Garage craftsman kits are not cheap, and are not intended to be cheap. Typical cost is $30 per car when trucks, couplers, paint, and glue are included. Today's craftsman kits are intended to build high quality, highly detailed models. The savings comes in because it takes the customer significant time to build and finish a kit. I don't think I have ever completed more than one kit in a month. Approached in this fashion, a $40 a month hobby budget can work. OTOH, I will never build more than about 40 cars and a handful of locomotives and 20 structures in my foreseeable future (same was true for most model railroaders in the early '50s).

Exactly my point; however, the number of items any given individual intends to purchase is probably not relevant.

As for tooling costs, lasers, quality molds, photo engraving, lost wax casting equipment, and even 3D printers are far cheaper than cutting steel dies. Typically, less than $10K is needed for the tools to get started in producing low quantity craftsman kits for each of the production methods. Because of the comparatively low up-front investment, production runs of 50-200 items are entirely practical.

How many individual modelers or craftsmen with the prerequisite skills do you believe have $10,000 to invest in getting started? I certainly can't do that.

If you only produce 50 cars of a particular prototype (common run for a resin kit using 2 sets of molds), advertising can be as simple as an announcement on several specialty modeling forums. If you produce a model of a PRR box car from 1888, announcing on the PRR and Early Rail groups will probably sell out a run of 50 in short order. Advertising beyond getting the word out to likely customers is not needed.

The model for this concept is Trains of Time, which pre-sells everything and never has anything in stock. Consequently, I never buy anything from them. For an individual to run off a series of cars is a leap of faith into an uncertain market, and it will only take one such failure to undoubtedly shut down the business. I wouldn't risk my garage business on such a concept.

I agree, the magazines are losing advertising revenue when compared to the past. Internet ordering already has taken away the 2-4 page spreads of the big mail order companies of the 1980s and earlier. If you notice, Model Railroader has reduced its content to keep the approximate same ratio with its advertising. Many cottage manufacturers take out a small blurb that simply gives their web site address and maybe a sentence or two about what they produce. And since Model Railroader charges more than the other magazines, and is perceived to have fewer craftsmen modelers in its readership, the advertisements tend to be in the other magazines. Magazines (like newspapers) are in trouble across the board - the old business model just isn't working that well.

The problem area for which there is no solution to emerge yet is model locomotive production. I doubt that locomotive kits are ever going to come back - although I would like them to. The skill levels to build a good-running and nicely detailed kit are quite a jump for most beginning model railroaders. Low rate production locomotive kits would (and the very few that are made do) cost more than today's plastic production at list price. So I don't see locomotive kits coming back up until Chinese production ratchets up another $200 or more per locomotive.

just my thoughts
Fred Wright

The current trend is away from smaller scales and into production of ever increasing numbers of large scale kits, O and On3/On30 being the "new HO". This being the case, it's harder for garage entrepeneurs to make an impression on such a market, since larger scales demand greater detail, including DCC. Meanwhile, costs of even N-scale locos have gone up dramatically, but but in the process and entire era of railroading has almost completely disappeared - the 1800's to the early 1900's. No cars or loco's are sold to meet this market at all, apparently under the assumption that that era is restricted to narrow gauge. I guess no one reads railroad history anymore.

I had to buy sets in order to obtain proper passenger and freightr cars, and the freights frankly aren't that good. Even the Cabbose folks just shrug and walks away when questioned about lack of period models. Under those circumstances, I don't hold out much hope for the future.