Just an observation on the price of things

[belstone]

Tooling is a really interesting area and yes it has all to do with the cost.

Thank you very much for that.  I would love to know a lot more about production methods as it fascinates me.  I'd also love to know how many units of a particular model Farish aim to sell - we think it's a small market, but how small exactly?

[Chris Morris]

This is not attempt to restart the discussion on prices which certainly had run its course. Just an observation.
I needed a new chassis for my Farish GWR rail at and following advice on another topic on this forum I purchased a Tomy chassis direct from Japan using EBay. I only received it today and gave it a test run straight out of the package. I have to say this chassis oozed quality. Wonderfully smooth, quiet, wobble free, fantastic pick up and absolutely excellent slow running. It cost me just over £20 and the selling price in the UK is under £30.
My observation is that the rep of a Farish coach is £30 while the rep for a class 24 is £120. A difference of circa £90. The main difference between a coach and a diesel loco is that the loco has a powered chassis. In the context of the cost of the excellent Tomy chassis this price difference seems somewhat high. Ok there may be volume differences and locos have lights but the price difference seems high. Maybe UK manufacturers should design diesel locos around the already available Tomy chassis.

But you have done just that

Yes - apologies for that. I don't know what chassis sizes Tomy make but I'm thinking say £30 for a 3D loco and £20 for a Tomy chassis and with a bit of work that's a new loco or railcar for £50. And based on the way this one chassis is designed and works, it will be a brilliant runner. With new ready run prices going up it is just possible that building locos could become more popular in the future. I think that is a good thing.

[Snowwolflair]

Tooling is a really interesting area and yes it has all to do with the cost.

Thank you very much for that.  I would love to know a lot more about production methods as it fascinates me.  I'd also love to know how many units of a particular model Farish aim to sell - we think it's a small market, but how small exactly?

Not sure, but rumor has it Dapol make in batches of 1000 per livery.  You can always re run the batches if sales exceed supply.  Lead time to re-order should be about 12 weeks, assuming the factory has capacity.  The liveries that don't sell become their specials.

That's why Blue Brighton Bells and Pullmans with custard ends are still available where as the brown Bell and the blue front Pullman are now silly prices, andt why Farish have reordered the Blu Pullmans and are releasing them as a set, they can make big money on them.

I don't know if anyone here is into ladies clothes, but your wives will tell you that Zara make their clothes in batches and when they are gone they are gone, where as BHS and others commit to very large seasonal buys.  Guess which one is not going out of business.

[red_death]

Farish's minimum production run is 3000.

The balance of manufacturing costs for model trains does depend very much on how much assembly is required - hence why complicated to manufacture with lots of separate detail models (eg Farish Polybulks) are more expensive than something simpler.  There is clearly a balance between detail and cost, but just as it isn't financially possible to go too extreme with the detail the flip side is that there has to be sufficient detail to satisfy the existing market and perhaps more importantly to satisfy future customers (particularly from other scales).

Cheers, Mike

[Snowwolflair]

I don't know what chassis sizes Tomy make but I'm thinking say £30 for a 3D loco and £20 for a Tomy chassis and with a bit of work that's a new loco or railcar for £50. And based on the way this one chassis is designed and works, it will be a brilliant runner. With new ready run prices going up it is just possible that building locos could become more popular in the future. I think that is a good thing.

There are some very nice white metal loco bodies from now defunct suppliers available from Ebay, where the required chassis is long out of production.

Or simply get a drawing and some plasticard. 

[railsquid]

Tooling is a really interesting area and yes it has all to do with the cost.

soft tooling can make up to 10,000 shots (cycles of injection moldings) and hard tooling is hundreds of times more but more expensive.

In Hornby days the molds were made by hand,  I visited Airfix as a lad and saw them making kit molds.  These days the tooling is made by computerized systems, is just as expensive but is much faster to produce.

What causes the cost is the number of parts to the mold/tool.  Airfix kit is a two part tool, where as a locomotive body can have 5 to 8 parts and its the assembly, dis assembly of the tool pre and post the molding shot that increases the per unit cost.

The reason the Japanese make detail the way they do is to allow simpler molds and faster and cheaper injection molding cycles.

So still curious here - as "the Japanese" is a rather broad term - which Japanese model railway manufacturer(s) are we talking about here? Kato? Tomix? Greenmax? MicroAce? Tomytec? Modemo?

[red_death]

Not sure, but rumor has it Dapol make in batches of 1000 per livery.  You can always re run the batches if sales exceed supply.  Lead time to re-order should be about 12 weeks, assuming the factory has capacity. 

I'm not sure where you heard the Dapol livery batch size but it isn't correct - Dapol's livery batches have been significantly smaller for many models.

In general some factories are treating the same livery with two (or more) numbers as one livery batch allowing more variants to be produced (hence why we have been able to offer more number variations of Pendolinos, TEAs etc).

Yes - apologies for that. I don't know what chassis sizes Tomy make but I'm thinking say £30 for a 3D loco and £20 for a Tomy chassis and with a bit of work that's a new loco or railcar for £50. And based on the way this one chassis is designed and works, it will be a brilliant runner. With new ready run prices going up it is just possible that building locos could become more popular in the future. I think that is a good thing.

Some of the Tomy chassis have a two speeds - stopped and top speed! An exaggeration perhaps but not too far from reality.  The bigger problem with many of the Japanese chassis is that the wheelbase, bogie wheelbase and wheel sizes don't match what we would need.

Cheers, Mike

[Snowwolflair]

Tooling is a really interesting area and yes it has all to do with the cost.

soft tooling can make up to 10,000 shots (cycles of injection moldings) and hard tooling is hundreds of times more but more expensive.

In Hornby days the molds were made by hand,  I visited Airfix as a lad and saw them making kit molds.  These days the tooling is made by computerized systems, is just as expensive but is much faster to produce.

What causes the cost is the number of parts to the mold/tool.  Airfix kit is a two part tool, where as a locomotive body can have 5 to 8 parts and its the assembly, dis assembly of the tool pre and post the molding shot that increases the per unit cost.

The reason the Japanese make detail the way they do is to allow simpler molds and faster and cheaper injection molding cycles.

So still curious here - as "the Japanese" is a rather broad term - which Japanese model railway manufacturer(s) are we talking about here? Kato? Tomix? Greenmax? MicroAce? Tomytec? Modemo?

From the chassis I have seen certainly a good percentage of KAto Tomix Greenmax etc.  but the easy way for me to spot it is to look at the number of mold parts needed to make a part.

[Snowwolflair]

Some of the Tomy chassis have a two speeds - stopped and top speed! An exaggeration perhaps but not too far from reality.  The bigger problem with many of the Japanese chassis is that the wheelbase, bogie wheelbase and wheel sizes don't match what we would need.

I would agree, but I use DCC so that is programmable and ceases to be a problem.

Wheel and wheelbase size a problem yes, but you can cut and shunt.  The Chrome finish is generally a bigger problem as it does not take paint well.

Wow, Dapol batches that small, how are they still in business?

[red_death]

Batch size is really only a question of: will the factory run off that small a batch size and will the customer pay for it. I put on the previous thread about prices an example of how batch size has an influence on costs assuming you want to pay off tooling costs on the first run (which for increasingly small production runs you do want to).

[railsquid]

Yes - apologies for that. I don't know what chassis sizes Tomy make but I'm thinking say £30 for a 3D loco and £20 for a Tomy chassis and with a bit of work that's a new loco or railcar for £50. And based on the way this one chassis is designed and works, it will be a brilliant runner. With new ready run prices going up it is just possible that building locos could become more popular in the future. I think that is a good thing.

Some of the Tomy chassis have a two speeds - stopped and top speed! An exaggeration perhaps but not too far from reality. 

The ones I've got are OK, though not in the same league as current Kato/Tomix RTR chassis, and I have heard negative reports from others.

The bigger problem with many of the Japanese chassis is that the wheelbase, bogie wheelbase and wheel sizes don't match what we would need.

To be honest it would surprise me if the chassis are exact or even close matches for many of the Japanese models they're designed to run under.

I suppose one could think about commissioning chassis better suited to the British market, but then it comes back to the basic issue that the Japanese market is large enough to support this "self-assembly" submarket, but the British N market very likely won't have the scale to push unit prices down.

[Ben A]

Hello all,

It may also be worth pointing out here that Japan has a population approximately double that of the UK, and while the country has a nominally larger area, the population density is significantly higher.  So houses tend to be smaller.

In Japan, N Gauge is by far the dominant scale and I have heard it said (though I can't attribute it) that there are anyting between 5 and 7 million N gauge enthusiasts there.  If we take the British market as being maybe 70,000 modellers - 100,000 absolute maximum - then it is a market that is at least 50-100 times larger.

Also, while I have never visited Japan, I have been told by Japanese colleagues that it is a country where modelling as a hobby in general is more respected and popular.

In my experience the Japanese models are made with absolute precision, and run beautifully, but are definitely made down to a price.  They often feature relatively rudimentary moulded underframe or roof detailing, and I have heard that the Kato/Lemke Class 66 models to 1:160 scale have chassis of a significantly cheaper and more basic design than Japanese Kato because that was the specification to keep costs down.

It doesn't help, of course, that our models are 1:148 so very few items can be shared between ranges; for manufacturers used to 1:160 scale, the 1:148 models for the UK are a bit of a financial cul-de-sac.

I think we just have to face it that if we want decent and correct scale British models, given the significantly smaller market, we are going to have to pay a bit more than the Japanese or the Americans, where the markets are much larger.

cheers

Ben A.

[railsquid]

It may also be worth pointing out here that Japan has a population approximately double that of the UK, and while the country has a nominally larger area, the population density is significantly higher.  So houses tend to be smaller.

According to this list, Japan is number 40 and the UK number 51, though Japan consists largely of steep up-and-down hills so housing is mainly concentrated in the few flat areas.

In Japan, N Gauge is by far the dominant scale and I have heard it said (though I can't attribute it) that there are anyting between 5 and 7 million N gauge enthusiasts there.  If we take the British market as being maybe 70,000 modellers - 100,000 absolute maximum - then it is a market that is at least 50-100 times larger.

Somewhere I dug up a source giving some qualified ballpark estimates as to the size of the market, I'll see if I can find it again.

Also, while I have never visited Japan, I have been told by Japanese colleagues that it is a country where modelling as a hobby in general is more respected and popular.

Put it this way - the bookstore at my local station has a small selection of train books for children, including one detailing the trains of the private line the station is on, in a nice bite-friendly hard cardboard format.

In my experience the Japanese models are made with absolute precision, and run beautifully, but are definitely made down to a price.  They often feature relatively rudimentary moulded underframe or roof detailing, and I have heard that the Kato/Lemke Class 66 models to 1:160 scale have chassis of a significantly cheaper and more basic design than Japanese Kato because that was the specification to keep costs down.

Damn, I'm going to have to start peering rivetcounterishly at the tops and bottoms of my Japanese locomotives now... Apart from maybe the Class 66 it's hard to compare like-for-like; construction methods are certainly evolving and there's a tangible difference between 80s/90s models and contemporary ones (from the main RTR manufacturers). In my very subjective opinion, modern mainstream Japanese locomotives are, all-round, ahead of pre-DCC Bachmann-Farish or Dapol, but not quite as superdetailed as say the latest Farish 31 or Dapol Western. And no DCC of course. The situation is also complicated in that multiple units have been historically much more common in Japan than elsewhere, so locomotives are only one part of the market.

I think we just have to face it that if we want decent and correct scale British models, given the significantly smaller market, we are going to have to pay a bit more than the Japanese or the Americans, where the markets are much larger.

Yup...

Which reminds me, I recently noticed there's a manufacturer of after-market N gauge detail accessories here called... "Revolution".

[NeMo]

All this talk of Japanese engineering reminds me of this story, told on the ScopeReviews website with reference to Leica cameras.

A German engineer once explained this to me.

"Let's say two teams of engineers, one Japanese, the other German, need to bolt two pieces of metal together.  The Japanese engineers will run all these computer simulations and stress calculations and then come up with this ingenious little bolt that no one has ever seen before.

"The German engineers still do the stress calculations, but at the end of it all, they look at each other and say, 'Ah -- what ze heck.  Let's use two bolts.  And make them big ones.' "

Cheers, NeMo

[Chris Morris]

Some of the Tomy chassis have a two speeds - stopped and top speed! An exaggeration perhaps but not too far from reality.  The bigger problem with many of the Japanese chassis is that the wheelbase, bogie wheelbase and wheel sizes don't match what we would need.

Cheers, Mike

Mine has more than two speeds. It now sits under a railcar and runs very well over dead frog points. Apologies for the dodgy videoing - I was driving and filming at the same time.
As stated in another thread this chassis is perfect for the railcar - bogie spacing and wheel spacing are exactly right (well they match the  farish abomination of a chassis perfectly).
see
https://youtu.be/nlCE3azXmEg