Hey Scott GP7/9?

@Cape Cod Northern posted:

Scott was going to do a special run of Maine Central GP's for Norm's O Scale and I had placed a pre-order. Recently I learned that Scott and Norm had a "falling out" and the special run was cancelled as a result of it.  Lionel has since released a Maine Central GP (for less than I would have paid for from 3rd Rail) and it even has Legacy but they got the colors ( yellow rather than Harvest Gold) wrong.

Good thing you saved money and purchased an incorrectly painted model. Wait,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,what's wrong with that picture?

@sdmann posted:

I tend to stock pile things that we use to make our Trains, so I have plenty in stock and plenty of time to restock motors, gears, pulley, belt, electronics, speakers, bearings, etc.

I used to work at Lockheed, and I saw what happened when JIT (Just In Time) manufacturing didn't work so well. The production manager of one of these big Airplane projects had a saying, "Don't do production on an engineering schedule. " and I live by those words now.

Remember Gant Charts?  All the engineers on this Project were sitting in a small, dark meeting room, taking their turn in front of the Production Manager. Each one stood up and presented slips in their schedules due to anything you could imagine.  After the 3rd presentation the Production Manager slammed his fist on the table, knocking over the projector, "The next man or woman to show me a delay is fired". He yelled in a booming deep frustrated voice.  The rest of the presenters declined to present their schedules at that meeting. They had to regroup to see if they could bring their schedules in.

You see, Lockheed doesn't get paid the $110,000,000 per plane until they are delivered.  A good lesson for this young engineer.

“Used to work at Lockheed”. Now I see the connection / link to your interest months ago, somewhere in another thread about modeling flat cars transporting Boeing fuselages.
I wondered about that interest. 🤔

@TrainBub posted:

“Used to work at Lockheed”. Now I see the connection / link to your interest months ago, somewhere in another thread about modeling flat cars transporting Boeing fuselages.
I wondered about that interest. 🤔

I was kicking and screaming 2 years ago about it. I worked in Boeing Renton for 4 years (till I moved to 777) on 737 wing line. I got to see those cars everyday and they made me late to work a couple times because they be switching them around with BNSF GP39s and BN colored SD40-2s. There would be more than train people interested in owning a model of those....I don't care how big they are.

@sdmann posted:

I tend to stock pile things that we use to make our Trains, so I have plenty in stock and plenty of time to restock motors, gears, pulley, belt, electronics, speakers, bearings, etc.

I used to work at Lockheed, and I saw what happened when JIT (Just In Time) manufacturing didn't work so well. The production manager of one of these big Airplane projects had a saying, "Don't do production on an engineering schedule. " and I live by those words now.

Remember Gant Charts?  All the engineers on this Project were sitting in a small, dark meeting room, taking their turn in front of the Production Manager. Each one stood up and presented slips in their schedules due to anything you could imagine.  After the 3rd presentation the Production Manager slammed his fist on the table, knocking over the projector, "The next man or woman to show me a delay is fired". He yelled in a booming deep frustrated voice.  The rest of the presenters declined to present their schedules at that meeting. They had to regroup to see if they could bring their schedules in.

You see, Lockheed doesn't get paid the $110,000,000 per plane until they are delivered.  A good lesson for this young engineer.

Gotta love these inter-departmental 'disagreements' so common in large corporations.  Many such memories as a young...and older...engineer at a component division of a large automotive corporation. 

Probably the most memorable of many I attended was at a production plant in Texas.  Newly constructed to build a critical emission control component, the plant had its usual share of start-up problems.  The production staff had been (so we were told) "cherry-picked" for their guiding-light abilities...and willingness to relocate the family to Texas from Michigan (No problem finding willing souls to do that nowadays!!).

Anyhoo...one of the weekly all-staffs review meetings chaired by the Production Manager was devolving into a shouting match, blame game, analogous references to that Texas county's annual rattlesnake round-up event, etc., etc., etc..  Finally, after arguing with engineering's firm position with regard to acceptable specifications for a critical component, the production manager declared..."I'm here to tell you that an engineering drawing and specification is but a suggestion of how the part's to be made!!"  Yepper.  He said it.  Our guiding light.

Lots of 'Dilbert' fodder.

KD

It looks like the boat arrived at the pier in oakland this morning per scotts link above. Excited to see how these models came out!!

Usually we have the models with in 10 days of arrival to port. My guess is the 9th to unload. We'll get them out the following weeks.

I have a confession, I'm on standby for one of these.  I wasn't in a position financially to pull the trigger to order one at the time orders were due.  Now I can.  Sad thing is I have to hope someone reneges on getting the model I want.

@sdmann posted:

Usually we have the models with in 10 days of arrival to port. My guess is the 9th to unload. We'll get them out the following weeks.

Thanks for this update. Now comes the busy shipping work for you. You have a lot of anxious customers waiting. I ask those customers to POST PICTURES of their purchases. It’s a nice sidebar to see all the pictures of the different roads !!!  Cheers 🙂

@superwarp1 posted:

I have a confession, I'm on standby for one of these.  I wasn't in a position financially to pull the trigger to order one at the time orders were due.  Now I can.  Sad thing is I have to hope someone reneges on getting the model I want.

Standby is your best hope. It can happen.

Sorry to say, I bet a lot of us confront this issue. The offerings are usually large and have more roads that I want - but can’t afford all at once !!! 😖  2nd runs are nice when they happen as it can allow me to “catch up” on my “wants”. However, choose carefully as if a second run happens, less “popular” roads may not get enough orders and be dropped for a production run.  

While Im waiting...[ waiting 4 the world to change] I need to uncover my Lionel and Atlas O GP7's and MTH GP9's to get ready and compare!

@prrhorseshoecurve posted:

While Im waiting...[ waiting 4 the world to change] I need to uncover my Lionel and Atlas O GP7's and MTH GP9's to get ready and compare!

That will be interesting. I expect MTH May stack up last due to never updated truck tooling and that MTH diesels sit unrealistically tall. Lionel - I don’t know “.  I have none. Atlas will be quite nice as I’ve a few myself. Sunset - I have highest expectations. All IMHO of course.

Well MTH "GP7" was really a GP9 with a GP7 number [in the PRR livery]. Atlas definitely has the correct handrails and the Lionel legacy version was surprisingly very close with the handrails not ad good as Atlas O's version.