my 10 year old cheap cordless drill works fine--but the battery dont. An hours charge lasts about a minute. I cant find a new battery.
So i splashed out on a new one. It came with 2 chargeable batteries--and a charger. Plus drill bits and a snake thing to go round corners.All in a plastic case.
It was £18.99 inc free postage on ebay.
So whats all this got to do with N gauge ?
I suppose someone will state the obvious that " they" make millions of these cheap drills so that brings the price down--to a few pennies--allowing the multitude of online del boys to make a nice living. So why cant the N gauge manufacturers learn from this?
No doubt the site headmaster will enlighten me.
The tone of your post even makes this sound like bait. ::)
How many £19 drills do you think they sell globally?
How many models of whatever your preferred thing is do you think they sell?
Some reading for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale
Obviously Farish could make 1,000,000 units. They'd be cheap. The market would be totally saturated. They'd go out of business. Win.
Quote from: njee20 on May 27, 2026, 10:07:53 PMThe tone of your post even makes this sound like bait. ::)
How many £19 drills do you think they sell globally?
How many models of whatever your preferred thing is do you think they sell?
Some reading for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale
Obviously Farish could make 1,000,000 units. They'd be cheap. The market would be totally saturated. They'd go out of business. Win.
so why do some manufacturers deliberately make short runs ?
Manufacturers don't openly publicise the size of their runs (except for limited editions), in the case of those limited editions the clue is in the name, they're limited, that keeps demand high.
Stock sitting on shelves costs money, so manufacturers don't want to end up with lots left over, and/or having to discount. That alone becomes a vicious cycle because people will just think "oh, I'm not paying full price, these will be discounted in 6 months time"; this was a common issue with Heljan models in OO.
The market being small, and fickle, makes it virtually impossible for manufacturers to second guess what will really be popular. Obviously they choose models they think will sell well, but we've seen plenty of models (Dapol 59 is the screamingly obvious example right now) where they just misjudged/mistimed the market. That's bad for everyone in the long term, and even in the short term in that instance it's only good if you want a 59 with inaccurate colours and incorrect lighting for £75, even then Rails still have 40+ of some models.
Quote from: Bigmac on May 27, 2026, 09:44:06 PMI suppose someone will state the obvious that " they" make millions of these cheap drills so that brings the price down--to a few pennies--allowing the multitude of online del boys to make a nice living. So why cant the N gauge manufacturers learn from this?
No doubt the site headmaster will enlighten me.
You've answered your own question in the first paragraph above.
The list of classes of loco not yet produced is getting smaller along with the size of those classes. The chances of getting 'one offs' such as 'Lion', 'Kestrel' etc are virtually nil.
And while we are pondering market sizes and economics, there is the eternal question of why does a pint of beer cost twice as much in a London pub as in my local Wetherspoons in the Midlands. Should be a great opportunity for opening a pub in London
@Bigmac and selling beer imported from the Midlands.
Quote from: Bigmac on May 27, 2026, 10:26:01 PMQuote from: njee20 on May 27, 2026, 10:07:53 PMThe tone of your post even makes this sound like bait. ::)
How many £19 drills do you think they sell globally?
How many models of whatever your preferred thing is do you think they sell?
Some reading for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale
Obviously Farish could make 1,000,000 units. They'd be cheap. The market would be totally saturated. They'd go out of business. Win.
so why do some manufacturers deliberately make short runs ?
The simple answer to that is that they don't just for the sake of doing so, it is driven by commercial considerations.
Before even starting the process of making a model they will consider the likely market size for it, and if that projected demand does not meet or exceed the minimum order quantity required by their factory then chances are it won't proceed.
If it
does meet a MOQ level the next question is to determine how many models of each livery and in total should be made. The greater the number made the lower the unit cost is likely to be, but that is only beneficial if they can all be sold. As
@njee20 has said, it is no use making a huge volume in order to get the unit cost down if 3/4 of them stay on the shelf tying up valuable working capital, that is a sure fire route to financial disaster.
So a manufacturer has to try and walk a tightrope between producing enough to meet the factory's MOQ and expected demand while not massively oversupplying the market, and the N market is not huge so typically the volume of any given N product made will in comparison to your cordless drill be miniscule.
Typically manufacturers do not reveal numbers, but by way of an example it is fairly well known that Graham Farish models have been made in batches of 1008 per livery variant (these days often split into two running numbers) so if there are four liveries produced that's a shade over 4,000 in total.
Roy
I wonder how many of these (https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/news/post/peco-grain-hoppers-three-new-whisky-wagons) have been made over the past half century?
Mike
Quote from: maridunian on May 28, 2026, 10:12:40 AMI wonder how many of these (https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/news/post/peco-grain-hoppers-three-new-whisky-wagons) have been made over the past half century?
Mike
Indeed even longer than half a century I think, the wagon was, if memory serves introduced in the early 70s so that tooling has well and truly paid for itself!
Quote from: Roy L S on May 28, 2026, 10:22:38 AMQuote from: maridunian on May 28, 2026, 10:12:40 AMI wonder how many of these (https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/news/post/peco-grain-hoppers-three-new-whisky-wagons) have been made over the past half century?
Mike
Indeed even longer than half a century I think, the wagon was, if memory serves introduced in the early 70s so that tooling has well and truly paid for itself!
The first batch of these wagons were built in 1966. The Peco model is close to the first design, but the spacing of the outer stanchions is wrong. Later designs had fewer vertical stanchions.
They were probably first made by Peco in around 1969, because the 15' tank wagons came out in about 1967 (made originally by Minitrix IIRC) and then by Peco around 1969. I was still into OO at that time. I remember the adverts in the RM called "Whisky galore". They had sprung couplings at the start. Elsie couplings came about on the 10' wheelbase wagons first. I had some of both 15' and 10' wheelbase wagons in 1971 when I started in N. The Peco wagon chassis were considered much better than the Farish ones at the time.
Not sure if I've added anything to the discussion! And very off topic.
Quote from: Bob G on May 28, 2026, 12:40:06 PMQuote from: Roy L S on May 28, 2026, 10:22:38 AMQuote from: maridunian on May 28, 2026, 10:12:40 AMI wonder how many of these (https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/news/post/peco-grain-hoppers-three-new-whisky-wagons) have been made over the past half century?
Mike
Indeed even longer than half a century I think, the wagon was, if memory serves introduced in the early 70s so that tooling has well and truly paid for itself!
The first batch of these wagons were built in 1966. The Peco model is close to the first design, but the spacing of the outer stanchions is wrong. Later designs had fewer vertical stanchions.
They were probably first made by Peco in around 1969, because the 15' tank wagons came out in about 1967 (made originally by Minitrix IIRC) and then by Peco around 1969. I was still into OO at that time. I remember the adverts in the RM called "Whisky galore". They had sprung couplings at the start. Elsie couplings came about on the 10' wheelbase wagons first. I had some of both 15' and 10' wheelbase wagons in 1971 when I started in N. The Peco wagon chassis were considered much better than the Farish ones at the time.
Not sure if I've added anything to the discussion! And very off topic.
The oldest price list I can find is 1988 (https://www.ness-st.co.uk/pdf/Peco_Pricelist_Feb_1988.pdf) when these sold for £3.25 each. According to the Bank of England (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator), that would be £9.29 in today's money.
I've no idea whether these have been in continuous production or batched, but my impression is they have always been available to buy, and are clearly a profitable enough product!
Mike
When I started in N a Minitrix Mk 1 coach was £1.01 discounted to 96p. A Peco 5-plank wagon was 40p and a steel mineral wagon 44p. I think the 15' wheelbase tank wagons were about 65p. The Jubilee was £9.50. There were only a handful of UK RTR locos, and half of those were not to scale or in some cases even recognisable as UK outline! Britannia was £7.17. The Farish Holden tank and 94xx pannier were around a fiver.
We were poor but we were happy, and we made do.
Peco actually painted a Minitrix V200 to look like a Warship for one of its early N catalogues (a reverse of what was done to a real Warship in preservation, which was painted to look like a V200), hauling a block train of its 15' tanks (later to become TTAs).
Quote from: Bob G on May 28, 2026, 02:09:53 PMWhen I started in N a Minitrix Mk 1 coach was £1.01 discounted to 96p. A Peco 5-plank wagon was 40p and a steel mineral wagon 44p. I think the 15' wheelbase tank wagons were about 65p. The Jubilee was £9.50. There were only a handful of UK RTR locos, and half of those were not to scale or in some cases even recognisable as UK outline! Britannia was £7.17. The Farish Holden tank and 94xx pannier were around a fiver.
We were poor but we were happy, and we made do.
Peco actually painted a Minitrix V200 to look like a Warship for one of its early N catalogues (a reverse of what was done to a real Warship in preservation, which was painted to look like a V200), hauling a block train of its 15' tanks (later to become TTAs).
i cant remember prices when i started--around '75 i think. First loco was the lima 4f--then the farish 94xx. I quickly collected all the british outline stuff--then bought a fleischmann 38. That did it for me--i sold all my british outline and went all out for german steam and old electrics.
i still cant understand why the larger n gauge manufacturers dont go all in for a really sure fire popular model that hasnt been produced before. IN my case it would be ex lms princess, or a patriot. Ex GW would be King or county. Southern would be a Nelson. I dont model eastern region.
Of these i think a King produced in high volume and attractively priced would be a world wide best seller.
Oh no, please don't start another wish list thread :doh:
Quote from: Newportnobby on May 28, 2026, 06:23:15 PMOh no, please don't start another wish list thread :doh:
"The list of classes of loco not yet produced is getting smaller along with the size of those classes. The chances of getting 'one offs' such as 'Lion', 'Kestrel' etc are virtually nil."
you never know--one might just take notice.
Quote from: Bigmac on May 28, 2026, 05:59:07 PMi still cant understand why the larger n gauge manufacturers dont go all in for a really sure fire popular model that hasnt been produced before. IN my case it would be ex lms princess, or a patriot. Ex GW would be King or county. Southern would be a Nelson. I dont model eastern region.
Of these i think a King produced in high volume and attractively priced would be a world wide best seller.
The King has actually been produced already as a RTR model, it was one of the last of the Poole produced designs, but after takeover by Bachmann a further improved run was done from what was essentially the same tooling.
A new tool King was mooted by DJM, but never got beyond a CAD, it was proposed again by KR Models as a first venture into N, but again never seemed to gain that much traction in terms of interest (maybe partly at least because it wasn't seemingly all that well promoted) so I would (personal opinion only) be very surprised to see one produced anytime soon.
I won't go over what has already been said about production quantities again because it has already been explained why quantities are decided at the way they are, and why producing a higher volumes doesn't work for the N market, which although the second most popular scale in the UK after OO is obviously nowhere near as big.
Regards
Roy
Quote from: Bigmac on May 28, 2026, 05:59:07 PMOf these i think a King produced in high volume and attractively priced would be a world wide best seller.
I doubt 1% of UK stock is sold abroad. The idea that any model could be a "world wide best seller" is utterly misguided IMO. The King seems a weak example too, given the failures that have been cited.
Quote from: Newportnobby on May 28, 2026, 06:23:15 PMOh no, please don't start another wish list thread :doh:
Yes, when these recent posts are compared to the title of this thread, there's no correlation!
Quote from: Bigmac on May 28, 2026, 05:59:07 PMOf these i think a King produced in high volume and attractively priced would be a world wide best seller.
Evidence of response to recent calls for "Expression of Interest" have proved that a 'King' is actually less desired by N-gauge modellers than London Underground Stock!
Unless you can provide hard evidence that the lack of interest was solely due to widespread aversion to the 3 promoters of Kings (DJ Models, Hattons, KR Models) and conversely acceptance of Revolution (the only differentiating factor) then it has to be accepted that the supposed 'Demand' for a king is actually a very small albeit rather vocal cohort...
Kings, like several other large steam locomotives, could only be used on a very small number of main line routes.(3 in the case of the kings). As a result any modeller of authentic 'lesser' routes naturally looks to buying smaller, less grand locos.