Quote from: mark100 on June 05, 2015, 12:55:43 PM
Lima types both in N and OO gauge as an economy range. 1 motor bogie and a feed coming from the trailing bogie to the motor bogie.

Please no! Those were truly dire - we do not need a return to that, it would be terrible for N!!

Cheers,
Alan

Quote from: Dr Al on June 05, 2015, 12:58:18 PM

Quote from: mark100 on June 05, 2015, 12:55:43 PM
Lima types both in N and OO gauge as an economy range. 1 motor bogie and a feed coming from the trailing bogie to the motor bogie.

Please no! Those were truly dire - we do not need a return to that, it would be terrible for N!!

Cheers,
Alan

Maybe for some, but possibly not for those who have limited budgets and would be just happy with a N Gauge loco that just ran forwards and backwards.

Quote from: mark100 on June 05, 2015, 01:00:26 PM
Maybe for some, but possibly not for those who have limited budgets and would be just happy with a N Gauge loco that just ran forwards and backwards.

Maybe, but I doubt any manufacturer in their right mind would consider it and put their reputation on the line as a result - certainly for Bachmann it would go completely against their business model of improving standards and quality through re-engineering.

And they'd need to tool that from scratch anyway, so it'd cost similar to tooling something far superior - IMHO there is no way we'll ever see this.

Cheers,
Alan

Quote from: Dr Al on June 05, 2015, 11:58:19 AM

Quote from: railsquid on June 05, 2015, 11:55:03 AM
However I'm not sure how feasible that would be for the UK - in Japan,

The market in Japan is supposedly huge compared to here - I might be wrong, but IIRC it was said that Kato do runs of 10,000 models; as compared Dapol/Farish's 250-1000 odd....

Exactly... I don't have access to any figures, but my guess - going entirely from my amateur observations - is that the Japanese N-gauge market is somewhere between 10 and 20 times larger than the UK one. All down to economies of scale - Japan has twice the population of the UK, trains are much more part of everyday life, N gauge became the dominant scale early and manufacturers were savvy enough to make it easy and accessible even for people with little space and small budgets (hence Unitrack/Finetrack). The market is certainly large enought to support two major manufacturers (Kato and Tomix), two large "niche" producers (MicroAce and GreenMax) as well as a bunch of niche manufacturers (e.g. Modemo for trams), with a fair bit of duplication especially for the more popular models. Not without its problems - MicroAce in particular has problems, apparently it uses the same Chinese factory as Dapol. Kato and Tomix do split production between Japan and China, which presumably mitigates their exposure to the vagaries of the Chinese labour market.

FWIW HO here by contrast is "expensive" - typically at least 3 times the price of N - and the range is much more limited, and O is presumably for the 1%ers, I was looking at a display earlier today and if I sold my entire N collection I could probably raise most of the purchase price for a single loco...

Quote from: railsquid on June 05, 2015, 01:12:26 PM
FWIW HO here by contrast is "expensive" - typically at least 3 times the price of N - and the range is much more limited, and O is presumably for the 1%ers, I was looking at a display earlier today and if I sold my entire N collection I could probably raise most of the purchase price for a single loco...

O is hardly cheap in the UK either - the Heljan diesels are usually around the 500 quid mark.

Quote from: Dr Al on June 05, 2015, 12:58:18 PM

Quote from: mark100 on June 05, 2015, 12:55:43 PM
Lima types both in N and OO gauge as an economy range. 1 motor bogie and a feed coming from the trailing bogie to the motor bogie.

Please no! Those were truly dire - we do not need a return to that, it would be terrible for N!!

How about the old LoneStar mechanisms? I'm sure any patents on them must have run out by now

Quote from: davidinyork on June 05, 2015, 01:19:07 PM

Quote from: railsquid on June 05, 2015, 01:12:26 PM
FWIW HO here by contrast is "expensive" - typically at least 3 times the price of N - and the range is much more limited, and O is presumably for the 1%ers, I was looking at a display earlier today and if I sold my entire N collection I could probably raise most of the purchase price for a single loco...

O is hardly cheap in the UK either - the Heljan diesels are usually around the 500 quid mark.

Multiply that by 5 for Japan...

Personally I do not think the British N Gauge market is big enough yet to support "premium" and "standard" ranges of models.  I am sure the folks at Bachmann (and other manufacturers) are all too aware of how price rises can reduce volumes but what can they do about it?

Hornby tried "Design Clever" and this seemed to backfire on them and are now reverting to high spec models.  One area I think Bachmann could look at is the bag of bits that seem to come with most N gauge rolling stock these days.  I for one do not tend to fit these and they simply go in a tub with a label.  It might reduce the cost of models if these bags were made available as "spares" for those who wish to purchase them?  For people like me it might reduce the cost of models by a few Pounds...

Another option (which I am sure Bachmann are striving to do) is to grow the market volume.  No doubt they can achieve lower price points as volume increases.  However, as the current estimate seems to be that British N gauge is roughly 10-20% of OO then we are probably being cross subsidised already.  I remember Richard Lines remembering the issues Tri-Ang had with TT where customers thought the "little one" should cost less than the "big one" but production costs were almost identical.

One area Bachmann do seem to be trying is train packs/sets which are often excellent value for money.  Possibly extending this range might be an option to lower the average prices for locos and stock?

One idea above which I think does have real merit is targeted production.  Rather than producing thousands of models in all manner of liveries just focus on those requested by customers.  Now there is a risk here as I believe Dapol got their fingers burnt with the original run of Gresley coaches where the "market" said we want BR maroon and then promptly refused to buy them!  However, I am sure it is not beyond the whit of man to come up with a method where customer and production numbers can be better matched.  Of course this does raise the question about the sustainability of model shops...

Kind regards

Paddy

Quote from: mark100 on June 05, 2015, 01:00:26 PM

Quote from: Dr Al on June 05, 2015, 12:58:18 PM

Quote from: mark100 on June 05, 2015, 12:55:43 PM
Lima types both in N and OO gauge as an economy range. 1 motor bogie and a feed coming from the trailing bogie to the motor bogie.

Please no! Those were truly dire - we do not need a return to that, it would be terrible for N!!

Cheers,
Alan

Maybe for some, but possibly not for those who have limited budgets and would be just happy with a N Gauge loco that just ran forwards and backwards.

I think the crux of Mark's point here is less on the actual mechanism (maybe I'm wrong Mark, so feel free to say so), and more on getting something to market that's simple and cheap - hence making the models more affordable to those who can't / won't pay the going rate for the super detailed stuff. And even if it's not the crux of Mark's point, to my mind it's the crux of the debate.

I see your point Al about Bachmann not wishing to "go backwards". That said, if you own a stable of brands, there's no reason you can't introduce a "lower budget" brand which doesn't in any way tarnish the superior brands in your stable. New entrants to the hobby wouldn't know, or associate, Graham Farish with a lower budget brand, even if that said lower budget brand was owned by Bachmann, so long as Graham Farish didn't go down that route themselves.

I really do hear both sides of the debate on this one. It's a difficult call (maybe not to the manufacturers who have studied it and decided against it, since they have all of the info) but I'd like to think something will come along one day at the more "entry level". On the other hand, forging forward technically is also desirable, I just hope we don't price people out of the market (or should that be, I hope we don't restrict the size of the market). Perhaps we always have done.

Dan

Quote from: DesertHound on June 05, 2015, 01:48:26 PM
I think the crux of Mark's point here is less on the actual mechanism (maybe I'm wrong Mark, so feel free to say so), and more on getting something to market that's simple and cheap - hence making the models more affordable to those who can't / won't pay the going rate for the super detailed stuff. And even if it's not the crux of Mark's point, to my mind it's the crux of the debate.

I think we had this already - the Bachmann rechassied Poole models were essentially this - a simple chassis with existing body tooling. But they weren't significantly cheaper or certainly not as cheap as some folks appear to want though - it may just be that prices are what they are given constraints of the market and *can't* really come down much, no matter how simple (and potentially garbage) the chassis ends up being?

Add things like DCC compatibility (which would be a must on any model produced new-tool now) and I doubt it'll end up much cheaper than we currently see. I doubt any manufacturer could release a non-DCC compatible model these days without coming in for a lot of flak, unless there is excusable size reasons for very small tank locos or suchlike.

Cheers,
Alan

Hi Paddy

I think I have come to the same conclusion re size of the market. You said;

Quote from: Paddy on June 05, 2015, 01:44:00 PM
Personally I do not think the British N Gauge market is big enough yet to support "premium" and "standard" ranges of models.

So, with that in mind, your other comment follows on nicely ...

Quote from: Paddy on June 05, 2015, 01:44:00 PM
Another option (which I am sure Bachmann are striving to do) is to grow the market volume.

This to me is the $64,000 question. How do you grow the market? There will be those who convert from "Orribly Oversized" over time but wouldn't dipping a toe in the budget market be worth a go for Bachmann? Start with two budget models perhaps and a few wagons, coaches. Approach it from a "softly, softly, slowly, slowly" angle, rather than throwing large sums at it from day one with a fifty line range. I don't know what old tooling would be suitable but perhaps they have something they could use.

Just a thought. I really don't know if it would work, but it surely must be one strategy that could (note the word could, not will) grow the market.

I like your idea of "order on demand" but you are right, it would decimate what is left of the model shop scene.

Dan

Quote from: DesertHound on June 05, 2015, 01:59:55 PM
This to me is the $64,000 question. How do you grow the market? There will be those who convert from "Orribly Oversized" over time but wouldn't dipping a toe in the budget market be worth a go for Bachmann?

$64000 is a handy number as that's probably the cost of tooling one of those models!

Cheers,
Alan

Quote from: Dr Al on June 05, 2015, 01:57:33 PM
I think we had this already - the Bachmann rechassied Poole models were essentially this - a simple chassis with existing body tooling. But they weren't significantly cheaper or certainly not as cheap as some folks appear to want though - it may just be that prices are what they are given constraints of the market and *can't* really come down much, no matter how simple (and potentially garbage) the chassis ends up being?

That's true but they were released as "normal range", priced as such. They were targeted at the existing N Gauge market, with subsequent low volumes in mind (hence high prices). Any new budget range would be priced in order to grow the market, and a larger market means lower production costs. I know, I know ... it's chicken and egg! How do we get lower prices if we don't have a large enough market? How do we get a large enough market if we don't have lower prices?

Quote from: Dr Al on June 05, 2015, 01:57:33 PM
Add things like DCC compatibility (which would be a must on any model produced new-tool now) and I doubt it'll end up much cheaper than we currently see. I doubt any manufacturer could release a non-DCC compatible model these days without coming in for a lot of flak, unless there is excusable size reasons for very small tank locos or suchlike.

Good point bringing up DCC. I would say any budget brand forgoes DCC. Entry level is most likely going to be an oval or end to end with a siding or two. There's no need here for DCC. That's one of the bells, or whistles, you get when you pay top dollar. The more differentiating points you can come up with between your premium and budget products, the more you can separate the two markets and stop the cheaper products cannibalising the premium sector. Maybe have them DCC upgradeable (I don't know - I'm not a DCC man).

Dan

Quote from: Dr Al on June 05, 2015, 02:04:54 PM

Quote from: DesertHound on June 05, 2015, 01:59:55 PM
This to me is the $64,000 question. How do you grow the market? There will be those who convert from "Orribly Oversized" over time but wouldn't dipping a toe in the budget market be worth a go for Bachmann?

$64000 is a handy number as that's probably the cost of tooling one of those models!

Cheers,
Alan

Hence the idea to use some of the old tooling.

Ah, is this the 5 minute argument or the full half hour?

Seriously, this has been done again and again.  The market just is not big enough to have 2 ranges.   You inevitably cannibalise sales of one of the ranges.

I'm really not sure that larger production runs = lower unit costs.  If the tooling is old and amortised then the costs are all production costs and they are the same per unit if you produce 500 or 5000. The real issue is about how many pieces are required to produce a model - when you look at the seperate detail on a Polybulk you can understand why it costs so much to produce - the question then becomes not whether the detail is worth doing (it absolutely is) but whether all those individual parts need to be seperate.  My view on the later is that they don't necessarily have to all be seperate detail. I suspect that finding a balance between seperate and moulded detail (provided the detail is present and accurate) is a more likely way to find cost savings than a second range or larger production runs.

Cheers, Mike