I noticed on the web that Life Like has a Rock Island RS-2 coming out. Does anyone know if this so, or just talk? Thanks Polski
A website states that "Due to insufficient reservations, this project was cancelled by Walthers." Besides RI, other roadnames included in that run would have been LV, UP and ON.
I still contend that the 'preorder mentallity' before manufactures will produce an item is 'shooting themselves in the foot'. Granted...we lose out on some great stuff because there 'werent enough preorders'...but in the end...its the manufactiures who are losin $$$$$. We are just not buying what they wont produce...we arent out any money.
Agreed. This isn't a case like a brand new locomotive where there are significant development, tooling, and marketing costs associated with a release, this is a simple matter of paint. In the end, decorating the locomotive isn't a huge part of the cost to produce a run (all other factors considered). I realize that several manufacturers planned poorly and made too much inventory in the past, now they are trying to avoid that by making sure a market exists for pretty much every individual locomotive/car they make. The consumer misses out on factory decorated models for the favorite road, or new road numbers, but doesn't lose any money or sleep. If someone really wants something that was cancelled they can probably find a decal set and paint to do it themselves. Meanwhile the manufacturers miss out on what money they would make from the people who did pre-order, or reserve those items and may lose out on future purchases from those customers as well. Pre-order and strickly limited production business models have put me off of several manufacturers, even some I really like. The market clearly isn't satisfied by these industry solutions to the gross-over production problems of the past and I think manufacturers would do well to consider this when saying "We won't make it unless we get enough pre-orders!". The clicks on "Pre-Order" and "Reserve" buttons on various websites are not a good indicator of the potential overall market for any product and, while I was still working in the hobby industry, I found that they tended to put a lot of people off a particular item. That effect is magnified for the customers who actually went through the process of clicking the button, giving all of their information to the system, plugging in their credit card information, and then waiting... all with the understanding that they would likely see their order arrive at some point in the future only to be disappointed when they received an email cancelling their order because not enough had been received. I personally have 4-5 outstanding pre-orders and reserves I am beginning to expect will be cancelled at some point. At least when I reserve an Atlas product I know it will get to me eventually (thank goodness for their overall business model, even with its occasional problems). The whole thing boggles my mind.
Another point on this subject is that they do not always have a price available so you can at least plan for te delivery. Anyone with a fixed modeling budget might be unwilling to place a preorder for fear of having multiple preorders showing up at one time. I had this problem earlier this year when 4 locos arrived in a week. I had it covered, but could have been a problem.
An online retailer still lists B&M, CP Rail, NYC and SOU in stock but the new run is unfortunately listed as being cancelled.
I'm definitely not a fan of the pre-order system, but I'm not so sure that the manufacturers sometimes don't have a choice. My understanding of the problem Model Power was having before getting new life from MRC is that they could not get the funding they needed from banks because they did not work off the pre-order system. From Model Power's website: It sounds to me like the banks don't like to lend money to manufacturers to manufacture products in the hopes that they will sell.
Sounds like they need a new lender. Any number of businesses operate without a pre-order system, including hobby and toy companies. There must have been other factors involved in their dealings with lenders. I'm not going to speculate about what those were but clearly a company with a long history of being in business and being profitable should be able to find someone willing to lend them money.
It could be that limiting the run to only four roadnames helped doom the project. Would ON really be that big a seller? Atlas typically includes six roadnames in each run, sometimes rerunning a particularly popular scheme with different roadnumbers. I wonder who, if anyone, advises Walthers regarding selection of roadnames - might this be another example of the mysterious work of Charlie Vlk?
A little guidance, please? Apparently, my previous post was "edited" because I merely included the name of a certain New Jersey-based dealer in my post as a means of providing substantiation for the information therein. As often as I (re)read the "policy", it's (still) not obvious to me the simple the mention of a particular dealer's name - without links to their site or any discussion about them, whatsoever, violates the "policy." In fact, to quote from said policy: "Does this mean that the shear [sic] mention of a retailer is going to get a post deleted or a thread locked? Most likely not." And yet, it would appear that it does. Since another member's post in this thread was similarly "edited", perhaps some further clarification of the "policy" and its enforcement would be helpful.
Walthers is a joke in N scale. When they announced the last run of SW9's, they raised the price to the stores after orders were accepted. Most of the stores that I buy from honored the previously posted price. Now I have seen new MT SW1500's om Ebay for less than the price of the SW9, even thought they are using the SW9 mechanism. Added: Now all of the SW1500's priced below $80 have been removed. Either purchased or turned in on the LED recall I presume
I'm real sorry to hear that there won't be a RI RS-2. I don't like to buy things on reserve either. Thanks for all the replies. Polski
Walthers isn't committed to N scale and it seems like a step child in their product line, which is an enormous shame because the Life Like line was/is excellent and should fill a bigger part of the market than it does... this pre-order mentality is killing the brand, IMHO. I should point that, despite how much Walthers has ticked me off since buying out Life Like's line, the Walthers/Life Like RS-2 is an excellent locomotive, so perhaps painting and decaling an undec would be a good option for you. I have three in service and love their performance (I use DC so DCC compatibility may or may not be an issue for other users).
