Help understanding pricing

[JohnN]

If the BoBs and WC arrived tomorrow id blow ££££s on them and Dapol would be the best manufacturer in the world.

I'm with you on this one Craig. 

For half the price of the GF offering, I'm quite happy 'settling' for the Dapol autocoach. 

[DJM Dave]

Thanks for responses so far, and for keeping the thread on the straight and narrow.
I hadn't realised the Dapol autocoach was from such old tooling, so it would appear in my OP I was not comparing like for like. Of course, Farish have to amortize the tooling costs and this is normally done in the first year or two, whilst Dapol must have had the tooling paid for a few years ago.

Farish also seem to have higher production costs, as N Gauge is also competing with n scale, HO and OO for production space in Bachman factory.

Does this not also apply to Dapol? (I have no clue as to where the 00 and 0 stuff is made )
Has any production been moved back to the UK yet? I've not heard a peep about anything on that front.

I don't expect to get any understanding of pricing from the manufacturers as why should they give us such information? Having been used to dealing with tooling costs, the recovery of such and pricing across distributors and retail etc I'm aware not all companies are the same.
The only thing we can be sure of (apart from death & taxation) is that prices rise, income doesn't rise equally and therefore we have less to spend on our hobby.
I still wonder, therefore, if the Farish version is really worth double the Dapol one?

Hi mate,
For those interested,

The 14xx, syphons, cct, 45xx, M7, 73, Colletts the hated (by me) Ivatt 2-6-2 and autocoach were actually inherited by my, having been made by the time I joined Dapol.

I hated the Ivatt as it had a heck of a wobble, and I remember the Chinese sitting round a conference table with 6 Ivatt wobbling round a test track laid on it, to show both George and Myself that they ran smoothly and without wobble.

They didn't like it much when I produced a piece of bluetack and a cocktail stick and stuck it on each boiler top in turn emphasising the wobble.

Then to really pee them off, I then got a Minitrix 2-10-2 I think, out of its box and did the same, and it was rock steady.

Much gnashing of teeth and Chinese talk later, they agreed there was a possible problem that they would look into, but never ever did. Probably as they would lose more face by putting the problem right, which was down to chassis miss-moulding, and distorting while still hot off the tool.

The rest of the models that came after that were, and I am guilty of all of them, mine. Including the gap on the coaches when tooling them to NEM.

[Newportnobby]

Thanks for that, Dave. The bit about the 'wobble' made me snigger a little
I'm not doing the Dapol model down but wondered about the price differential which as been explained by me not comparing like for like.

For half the price of the GF offering, I'm quite happy 'settling' for the Dapol autocoach. 

The above quote sort of sums it up.

[exmouthcraig]

How very honest of you Dave, something that alot of manufacturers could take note on being! And a nice little insight into the workings of a worldwide working company.

[EtchedPixels]

I'm also generally not buying new stuff (except Peco and Union Mills). The prices are now silly - and getting sillier by the day except for those vendors.

Sure the new stuff looks even better, but I *can't* model the rest of the layout to that standard, nor do I view it with a microscope so it's just not that important to me. Union Mills isn't as detailed as  i like but it's fun fitting lamps, rails and finer detail.

Alan

[The Q]

One problem with the pricing not mentioned, is the Chinese government promised their factory workers a 20% pay rise every year for Five years. This with the pound falling as well has destroyed the marketing price levels for Bachmann.
Hence the huge price rises.

Dapol and hornby being British based can move production elsewhere.   Hornby has moved  humbrol production back  to the UK, and airfix to India.
Dapol has the advantage of having kept more here in the first place.

Bachmann being Chinese owned will find it harder politically to move production to a cheaper country.

[Chris Morris]

The rest of the models that came after that were, and I am guilty of all of them, mine. Including the gap on the coaches when tooling them to NEM.

Dave, if you had not designed that Western I wouldn't have bought one. Buying that Western caused me to build a layout for it and buy lots more stock to run on it. You are directly responsible for me spending thousands of pounds!

I could never understand why the NEM socket was place flush with the edge of the bogie. I've cut mine out and moved the socket back towards the wheels. I use the short shank coupings with this mod and the gap is ok.

[Chris Morris]

The Farish auto coach is a reasonable price for the excellent detail and finish - I would happily buy one. The Dapol auto coach was very good for its time and is an acceptable model even today. The moulding is nowhere near as crisp and the detail not as fine but its not too bad. I think the price for this is also reasonable; it is right that it is quite a bit cheaper than the Farish offering. Obviously none of us here have knowledge of the relative costs involved so all we can comment on is our perceived value.

Whilst I would love a Farish autocoach to go with my excellently detailed Farish 64xx I cannot see me buying one. I have a Dapol auto coach which is ok and so investing in the Farish coach is quite a long way down my model railway spending priorities.

[Richard G Dallimore]

Farish also seem to have higher production costs, as N Gauge is also competing with n scale, HO and OO for production space in Bachman factory.

Does this not also apply to Dapol? (I have no clue as to where the 00 and 0 stuff is made )
Has any production been moved back to the UK yet? I've not heard a peep about anything on that front.

Dapol use several factories contracted in for specific products or lines, whereas Bachmann own their factory and the ranges compete for production space. N Gauge being the smallest has possible been harder to justify producing, with out increasing prices/profit.

[tgv_obsessed]

I feel that it is neither here nor there whether there have been improvements or not. Something else must be going on too.

5 years ago, £20 for a Mk1 coach was plenty, now the starting point at hattons is £25. Hattons' cheapest loco with tender was £80, now its £94, an A2, its the sort of loco that probably wants those mark 1 coaches. So a loco and 4 coaches pops in at £194. Quite a jump from £160.

Taking inflation into account-  according to the bank of england the thing ought to cost £180 now. Some might say but what is £14 nowadays?- a little bit more than a packet of fags?- or 3 pints in London?

No, it is not far shy of double the rate of inflation and that is quite a lot of money actually. I know comparing Japanese with its large internal market to anything else isn't really fair- but I don't remember the cheapest tender steamer and 4 coaches costing the same as a Kato Eurostar. I know that the Loco is DCC ready now, but the passage of time ought to have absorbed the price increase for that in the past.

Now I can afford those few pints and a packet of fags- in fact it would probably do me good to spend that money on trains rather than things which will kill me sooner or later- but a packet of fags is expensive for the vast majority of people.

I know I havn't used the cheapest rolling stock produced as an example, yes Dapol have kept the price of some of their stuff lower, but I wanted to express myself in terms of a complete train that someone might like to run round their trainset. I don't think that in a country where most people's experience of a train is as a passenger, where the idea of a nice train is a passenger train that goes between cities, and that a special train is Tornado, Mallard or Flying Scotsman, it is unreasonable to use a passenger steam train to demonstrate this.

Okay I could have used Pendolino as an example- but that would really have tipped the scales - Compare that to a Kato Thalys of 5 years ago- I paid £229.

As I said at the start, I don't think it matters that the models have got better -everything gets better- everything apart from sliced bread, something else seems to have happened too.

Now I'm going to come at it from another angle. In my office the other day we were having a discussion about the cost of living, and how it seems to bare no resemblence to the inflation rate. We had that discussion the day before, and the day before that and, it seems, almost every other day.

It just might be that fewer and fewer people will be able to afford toy trains as economic factors mean that there is less budget for anything for most people. As that happens, then we will see the price really skyrocket.