Postby sarge » Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:29 am
There is a difference between the costs to make this stuff and what the market will bear.
I think $600 for a freightcar is obscene, myself, and I don’t think its going to work, certainly not in the long run. A couple thoughts:
As each country who made brass brought their standard of living more into line with the consuming nations, the prices hit a ceiling such that a new supplying nation was cultivated, historically Japan, then Korea, then China. There either is no-one left in the wings to be next or the consuming nations aren’t interested in doing so. That means any brass project, Japanese, Korean, or Chinese, will be the purview of the wealthy.
Plastic is germane, for that reflects the same condition. Scott’s diesels are in the $700-800 range per unit now and, with the inflationary picture we are looking at now and the Chinese standard of living, that won’t relax. Atlas is bringing in very little and hasn’t done much in years now.
As long as there are no new supplying nations being cultivated by us, that will be the future. Even if there are, but the cultivator is China (read Kader Group) rather than us, that still will be the future. New O Scale, brass or plastic RTR, collector or operator, is going to be the plaything of the rich.
Given that is true, can domestic manufacture continue to be dismissed with the wave of a hand? A few more stars align and no. Right now, a healthy portion of cost is the shipping, which can be negated by building domestically. Quality can also go up, as pieces would no longer be built behind closed doors and anything more than cursory final inspection by the importer an additional cost.
The elephants in the room are these, and they make a small herd all asking the same question. Is there a market for new brass or plastic RTR? In O, you are looking at a lot of estate material out there, and more coming. There is a lot of shopworn OEM stuff from the Chinese Glut days still to be absorbed. At least from an operator’s standpoint, he has options that new product, imported or domestic, can’t hope to compete with.
Then there are builders, and make no mistake there are builders younger than us. Their build often is retrofitting new tech in old models, but is that really different from the retrofitting of new details and drives on old models in our generation? Small batch manufacturing methods are about to change radically too, and we are certainly “small batch”. 3d printing is just getting into its stride for large items such as full shells as mainstream; who will be soldering stuff together from brass in ten years time? Or injection moulding short-runs? Or shipping it all over hell?
There is huge change coming, domestic drives and 3d printed shells and details? Colour prints with the paint and lettering integral to the print? The controls tech updated like any other tech, but more easily changed out in your gear, because the hobby as a whole followed the rest of the standards world and defined just the interface standards instead of the entire protocols? On that last one, think defining only the input and output required of any controls system and the physical hardpoints to install rather than calling one system a standard as DCC is defined today (and rapidly ignoring that definition). How about every workshop or club or hobbyshop having a 3d printer; place your order on Tuesday night before bedtime and all of it but the motor is printed by Wednesday morning in stunning colour; your build is to assemble all the details to the shell, pull out a motor and the control boards of choice, and drop ‘em in. Want it ready to run? Don’t need to go to China or anywhere else for that level build, do we, not when the components ship over the ether rather than over the waves. None of that strikes me as implausible or even unlikely.
What does strike me unlikely are things remaining as they have been all our modelling lives being a requirement. The question no longer is who will inject our plastic or solder our brass for us, and how much will the fewer and fewer be willing to pay for it. That is on the cusp of vanishing like writing on parchment or casting in sand.
I hope I live to see it, too. It will be exciting to be part of.
No-one ever forgets where they buried the hatchet.
