Affordable N&W Coal hopper needed

Look at all the models of N&W steam locomotives by Lionel, MTH, and Sunset/3rd Rail, yet no accurate N&W 2-bay coal hoppers for all those Y3s, Y6s, and Class A models to haul. Some manufacturer sure is missing the boat!

Do the N&W two-bay, open-top hoppers need to be made out of lighter plastic or heavier metal for a unit train?

One way to reduce the cost per car is to produce and sell something like 40,000 open-top hoppers each year in 12 road numbers per road name.

Andrew

Weaver 2 bay ribbed are close.....Doubt you will see prototype exact units anytime soon. What is your idea of affordable??? BTW I'd buy them too.....

A heck of a lot less than the $300-$400 price for a brass model. $35-$45 range would be much more manageable.

Which brings us to another pet peeve of mine...

quote:

Doubt you will see prototype exact units anytime soon.

And why not?

Why can't an N&W version be used as the mold for a mass hopper offering? And...

...why can't a N&W CF/CG cab be used for the mold for a mass caboose offering? They are much better looking than those "Northeastern" cabs that are out there.

Also, the manufacturers need to keep in mind that not everyone can afford to buy 5, 10, 25, 50 or 100 cars at one time in order to build a train. The models must be readily available over time in order to build one's empire.

And why not?

Because, if it's not PRR, NYC, UP, or ATSF, it just won't get made

That's the sad truth.  Personally, I try to boycott those RR names and anything that's painted in a fantasy scheme using their prototypes (hey, helps me save $$$ too).

Bachmann has announced for the Williams line the 55-Ton 2-Bay USRA Outside Braced Hopper.

They are listed at $64.95.

Norfolk & Western is not one of the first 4 railroads.

Andrew

Some online retailers are showing them in stock at $39......but somehow I don't think they are out yet.....I do want some.....

Affordable AND accurate?

These were definitely affordable. I picked up a half dozen Lionel (MPC) 2-bay hoppers for $5 each at a train show. I spray painted them black and decaled them myself.

Yes, a good deal and a nice decal job. But, the cars are NOT correct SCALE N&W hopper cars. Note the lack of the peaked ends.

Well, not scale, but then we are not on the scale forum.  They look quite nice to me for O-27 use.

Maybe so, but please go back up to the top and re-read the original posters information/request. Plus this subject has already been posted/discussed on BOTH the 3-Rail SCALE AND the 2-Rail SCALE Forums, and all those folks also seem to desire a CORRECT, SCALE N&W 2-bay coal hopper at a reasonable price.

Bachmann could have the factory make the Peak Ends in a separate injection mold, to be cemented to the ends of the USRA hoppers before painting.

Andrew

In the plastic hobby we call small groups that make a lot of noise about the products they want the 'lunatic fringe'.  They are well organized, very vocal and demanding.  But they alone can not pay for new product cost. Manufactures have to make what will sell to the majority of the hobbyist and at the lowest cost possible.

Lets say Weaver decides the time and market is right for a true N&W 2 bay ribbed hopper. The newest Weaver freight cars are fantastic....but sell for $73 for 3 rail. Well tooling is not cheaper today than last year....so it's a good bet the price of about any newly tooled cat would be in the same range. So right off the bat they have missed the mark of affordable.  On top of that they still need to sell a BUNCH to re-coup their cost before a dime is made.  Kinda a catch 22......buyers want a $40 super correct car.....but will not buy when made and the price is almost double that.

I want an entire line of scale correct cars in the $30-40 range.....just not going to happen until we can recruit about 3 million more o scale hobbyist to join us....and buy! 

When I was in HO (last century) one of the makers came out with an ACL Wood Chip Hopper, similar to this SAL car:

The top addition was an individual piece that the buyer could either glue in place or leave off.  No reason one of the O scale makers couldn't do the same thing (other than they don't care to).

In the plastic hobby we call small groups that make a lot of noise about the products they want the 'lunatic fringe'.  They are well organized, very vocal and demanding.  But they alone can not pay for new product cost. Manufactures have to make what will sell to the majority of the hobbyist and at the lowest cost possible.

Dave, true to an extent, but I believe a lot of people would buy a correct N&W 2-bay hopper and some would buy MANY of them.

Thing is, you never know until you make it.  If all the manufacturers ever do is sit in their offices "up nawth" and only listen to the "fringe" element at York (hey, not everybody involved in this hobby goes to York) then what's the difference between doing that and listening to the smaller vocal groups wanting to get a specific item made?

Face it, today's makers aren't exactly pioneering their way thru the hobby, they keep pumping out the same old thing over and over (how many Hudsons and GG1s have been made?).  Henry Ford made a load of black cars, but even he realized people wanted more variety and choices, some failed, some didn't.

I get it as you said, but I don't like it and would prefer they liven things up a bit with some bold, new offerings that would attract not only the old baby-boomers like us, but some younger folks and folks wanting to move up to a larger scale than N or HO.

What O scalers and manufacturers need to do is start knocking down the myth that O scale ALWAYS requires more room (really depends on what a person wants) and $$$ (just look at the prices of some of the HO stuff coming out these days), and show the public that there's more to O scale than it being "just a toy" (I've never heard a HO or N scale modeler make that statement).

Like Bob2 sez....Opinion

And that is called 'Risk'!  And when the cash is limited for new investment anything outside the comfort zone will make you stay awake all night!!!

I understand better than many folks. I once pushed for a certain project with the guys I work with in the plastic model field. The project got approved. Then it was all on my back. The project is still in development so weather I succeed or fail we have yet to see....but it is not for the faint of heart!! 

There is just not enough 'buyers' out there right now for manufactures to spend a lot of cash in an area they consider risky. I agree a nice N&W hopper would be nice.....but if there are that many folks that want one....do a kickstarteer program and put the money where the mouth is. I can connect you to some great mold engineers!!

Same here.....IMHO only!

Dave,

I guess you can call us "Armchair Manufacturers"   It's easy to sit here and spend THEIR $$$ when kicking these ideas around.

Heck, anything is a risk in today's market, except maybe toilet paper (still not sure why they think they have to advertise it ).

I know by posting this I will be sent to the woodshed, but.........

After reading the above and the 3rail forum, I am reminded of a women in a store complaining about the price of an item and her low wages. It occurred to me that you can't have "high payin' American jobs and every day low prices". Same thing applies  here. We seem to want the best, true to scale, all of the rivets, and top quality N & W hopper for the lowest price(whatever that is). Well, let me inquire of you this. How many of you have actually seen these hoppers? How many actually paid attention to them when you saw them? Now, how many of you have a layout big enough to actually run 20, 30, 50 or 100 of these hoppers?

Yes, I would like something a bit more proto, but I have found that the Weaver cars get the job done, at a price I can live with(the coal loads are somewhat of a ball buster). When I run my N & W coal train, with a Y6 on front and back, I really don't have the time or concern to look at rivets, brake rigging, etc. I see a coal train running, reminding me of my youth and the 1000's of N & W coal cars that I witnessed as they passed by me. Besides that, when someone comes to see the trains run, they see a coal train or the returning empties pulled by an A, which most don't know the difference between an A and a Y, they just see a long train! Just try and explain the difference between single and compound-you get the far away look that says they are sorry they asked! Same thing with the coal cars!

Since they are short hoppers, 12 individually numbered hoppers would be the most reasonable amount to produced for a unit train.

Andrew

Maybe the solution here is to do a reasonable fascimile...take the close weaver 2-bay hopper, get a friend (or yourself) to do a 3-D shapeways print of the peaked end top, and assemble the two together. This could be done without total repaints if car schemes/numbers were correct on the cars already. Maybe not ready to run, but affordable and doable.

Peter

I'd rather have 5 of these than one "accurate" one.  Nice job!

I am with AMC Dave.  Manufacturers enjoy the same freedoms as the rest of us.  Suppose Weaver and Atlas actually have taken a dislike for anything that has peaked ends?  It is their right to not produce no matter how good the market.

They probably do not think like that - put together your group and send a firm order in.  They will respond if the order is big enough - they are not stupid.

opinion

Looks to me by looking back on the hobby in general in O gauge that the way the manufacturers/importers accomplish what the "lunatic fringe" category wants and still sell to the majority is to make prototype-specific models with accurate roadnames & numbers and also sell them with fantasy paint schemes, in this case, meaning accurate road names but just put on cars that the actual road didn't use.  The ones that buy the "fantasy" cars wouldn't care if they were accurate or not, just as long as they look good or are vaguely "close enough."

So to put it shortly, they are N&W specific coal hoppers, but also paint 'em up & offer them in Pennsy, NYC, & ATSF and they will sell. 

Good grief.

Nice try to generate something better Big Jim.

Amen brother!  But  I wonder if the SPFs would accept that (like we do with fantasy painted PRR items)?  I'm betting not.

That might be doable given that the Intermountain USRA 2-bay hopper kits were roughly in that price range only 20 years ago.

Then again, that's 2 decades ago, and a kit, and I'm not seeing you assemble 100 kits, despite the entertainment value in that visual. 

However, your price point would seem at minimum ~2- to 3-fold low for an actual full scale and accurately detailed model that you would not then complain about how wrong it is after it's put on the market.  You'd also probably have to settle for the most common of all of the classes that might also then be suitable for other road names.

It this what you are looking for?

This AtlasO hopper is a little bit more than you specified, but maybe you can find them discounted.

Jan

Here you go:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/O-SCAL...;hash=item4d1695bc23

just a tad of work, some trucks, somecouplers, paint, decals, and you've got an affordable N&W hopper

Hmmmmm......

A bit of Evergreen sheet and some angle strips.

I may have to try peaking my hoppers.   LOL

You'll need to make those hoppers wider too, & replace those Symington-Wayne trucks and add some stirrups while you're at it. 

...or fill it full of lead and make a doorstop.

Or take the Weaver 2 bay ribbed, make a master for the peak ends, make a mold and cast a bunch of the ends....attach them.....real close for not too much $$$.....

PS Weaver will make as few as 100 custom printed hoppers.....I can see a string of these myself!

quote:

Afterall, it is a hobby meant for fun, not frustration.

And while some may get their jollies painting and decaling a train load of cars, that is not what I call fun!

One point of this thread that many of you nay-sayers have seemed to miss is, it is just as easy to make a mold of, in this case, an N&W hopper (and then also market it as another road) as it is to make a mold for something generic and market it for whatever road, which for all intents and purposes is nothing more than a fantasy scheme for certain popular RR's.

Jim,

You are 100% correct.....it cost almost the same to tool a PRR hopper as opposed to a N&W hopper. 

The issue today is very little new tooling is being done. Look at the big 3 catalogs over the last 5 years....little 100% all new tooling done. Even the smaller guys have had to cut way back. And since there are a number of 2 bay hoppers, and a 'new' one coming from WbB, I don't see anyone saying 'I want to compete for the 2 bay hopper dollar'  and risking what little tooling dollars they have.

Your idea is good. It would be nice to see 5-10 newly tooled cars a year....just ain't gonna happen. And I'm not being insulting.....if anyone has $500,00-700,000 I know some great mold designers that would like work. I might even attempt it if I were not $700,000 short!

As mentioned in the other 2 threads 3 rail scale and 2 rail- there are countless Y3s Y6s and As out there that want to pull 2-3 dozen of these cars. Not just one..

But not enough folks willing to buy them to make it work......unless the funding is raised by those potential buyers?!?!?!?!

Jim, it's not being a nay-sayer. It's just being realistic. Like AMCDave and you agreed on, it doesn't cost more to tool up a PRR style hopper versus a N&W style. Same goes with your earlier requests for a N&W style caboose over the NE style caboose.

But from the train companies vantage point, they are going to produce items that were used by more railroads, thus giving them more production opportunties to make the largest group of customers happy. For example, Bachmann stated that was a big reason behind deciding to do their new WBB GP-38.

In addition, historically the northeast US has been the biggest customer base of the train hobby. Pennsylvania had more railroad lines running through it than any other state. Which reflects on what gets produced. It may not make you happy, which I understand, but the train companies are in business to please the largest group of their customers to make a profit.

I don't think they enjoy displeasing some of their customers with $60-$90 single train cars, but this obviously the price point they need inorder to produce these kinds of accurate, higher detail train cars and still stay in business.

After the K-Line banruptcy, Sanda Kan increased the amount paid up-front for production runs (meaning more importance on pre-orders with sufficient numbers). Then S-K had problems, and dropped nearly 60 train companies from production. Those companies were left scrambling for new production vendors, thus putting pressure on them, and helping to increase production costs. All the companies have paid a price for this, most notably Atlas.

Now add in the sluggish economy, and like AMCDave said, the train companies are obviously slowing down on new tooling. Plus they have all the other tooling, which may or may not be paid for yet. All the train companies say the same thing: it takes several sell-out production runs just to break even with the tooling investment costs... not make profit, just break even.

So you guys can keep hoping... maybe this car is already in the pipeline with one of the train companies. BUT if the business-side of this hobby was so easy, then all the train companies that have closed doors in the last decade along with all the train shops, would still be in business today.

As far as getting my jollies, well, I have learned to enjoy it as a hobby. There are items I've wanted to see made, that in 20+ years back in the hobby, have yet to be made. If I was waiting for a manufacturer to do it, I'd still be waiting. So I do it myself, and as a result, I have much of what I wanted. That's just my way of having fun. Which I think is far more enjoyable than waiting, especially now since consumers are feeling the financial pinch - as are the train makers and retailers too.

If people want to see low prices like what you get with Mattel Hot Wheels, then they will have to make the cars more popular with the average toy train operator so that the sales will increase and the production numbers increase.

Andrew

Naysayers sounds slightly pejorative.  I prefer the term "realist".

I really think this hopper is a beauty.  If the die cast bodies still exist, I will get one.

Folks who point out the obvious are not hurting your chances with the manufacturers. If the profit is there, your cars will be forthcoming, no matter what the realists or naysayers say.

But from the train companies vantage point, they are going to produce items that were used by more railroads

How many RRs owned the Baldwin DR-12-8-1500/2 Centipede (answer is approx. 5, with a total of 55 units)?

Does anyone really know just how a manufacturer arrives at what they'll make next?  Not having ever seen anything from a manufacturer (in the 15 years I've been into O scale) in the way of a survey of what we'd like to see next, I'm guessing they probably listen to a small circle of people who hold some influence over them.

If Weaver has a hopper that can be made to match a N&W car, simply by adding peaked end glue-on parts into the box, then that's who I'd contact.  Next best thing is to get a master made then start pumping out copies of the end so folks who want them can acquire as many as they need.