Plasticville

I don't know anything about any Plasticville product built after the 50s (gosh, I'm old), but the stuff before then was indeed solidly made.

Modern day plasticville suffers from the same QC problems as does most offshore hobby equipment. Do your part for the environment and buy vintage plasticville on eBay. Anything you can think of is there at competitive prices. As I tell my gen z sons, my part for recycling is to buy and use antiques.

@POTRZBE posted:

Modern day plasticville suffers from the same QC problems as does most offshore hobby equipment. Do your part for the environment and buy vintage plasticville on eBay. Anything you can think of is there at competitive prices. As I tell my gen z sons, my part for recycling is to buy and use antiques.

I agree. I get the most enjoyment from pre and post war trains, the durability is unmatched, but I have to admit I have trains from all era's and love them all.

@Grampstrains posted:

Don't hold your breath.  The old Plasticville  was made in the USA.  Now it's Chinese.  Stamping out plastic costs about the same in either country.  I guess it costs more to pay someone to put it in a box.

What does making these in China have to do with the amount of material and what material they use.  They could specify the exact same materials and process and still end up warping and cost more.  I feel if they are warping the problem is probably in the design specifications and not the manufacturing process.  If a company can save money by making the wall slightly thinner they will and no matter where it's made it will warp.

You can blame overseas manufacturing all you want but there is a lot of blame on the US company cheapening the product to save a few pennies by changing the design spec to use less material.

Having been involved in the injection molding process it has  do with the quality of the plastics, condition of molds, cooling of the molds during the molding process, use of cooling fixtures, (a device to hold the newly molded part in position while it cools to prevent warping) and cycle times.  Too much regrind (ground up rejected parts) in the raw material will dilute the chemicals added to  maintain the quality of the plastics through the molding process.

@Grampstrains posted:

Don't hold your breath.  The old Plasticville  was made in the USA.  Now it's Chinese.  Stamping out plastic costs about the same in either country.  I guess it costs more to pay someone to put it in a box.

I hear ya, but ...

Why do the Chinese have anything critical to do with this?

Manufacturers and marketers that serve our hobby, just like any other business, are ultimately responsible for the quality of the stuff they sell to us, even more so than their suppliers.  The buck stops here and not in China, or Vietnam, or Mexico.

Blaming it only on Chinese, or any other source of manufacturing for that matter, instead of in the folks who sell us the stuff, is deflecting the real responsibility away from it's true source.  Without calling them out you're letting them get away with it, and even worse, encouraging them to continue to do so.

Please put the blame in the correct place.

BTW - Of course the supplier also shares some responsibility but the marketer ultimately calls the shots.

Mike

OK Alan Arnold. Here’s your chance to venture into another product offering. Your  current buildings are thick, durable, non warping and made locally. All you need is the molds. 👍

Except for the collector pieces, most vintage Plasticville is pretty cheap these days. For those who are observant and for whom it matters, the newer Plasticville does not have the same "look" as the old because the pigments in the plastic are different and of the shades in fashion of the period. For the true postwar look, go USA vintage.

And, by the way, many of the originals do not stay together terribly well either.

Have fun.

Bob

Have your read the Athearn story?  Injection molding his own shells from dies he made himself at the start.  In this day and age, a person willing to learn the skills and techniques can still create the tools to make quality plastic items.  You won't stamp them out by the thousands, but the market is not that big in the first place, which is why cheaply made is the only option now.  Everybody seems to want a smartphone, billions of people, not too many want a plastic 1/48 scale train station.

@CALNNC posted:

Have your read the Athearn story?  Injection molding his own shells from dies he made himself at the start.  In this day and age, a person willing to learn the skills and techniques can still create the tools to make quality plastic items.  You won't stamp them out by the thousands, but the market is not that big in the first place, which is why cheaply made is the only option now.  Everybody seems to want a smartphone, billions of people, not too many want a plastic 1/48 scale train station.

Tooling from scratch in the U.S. today costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. What Irv Athearn did in the 1950s and ‘60s has no bearing on modern domestic manufacturing costs.

Tooling costs have to be amortized by the market, so if the market has shrunken the product costs will be higher. Even Athearn product that once sold for less than $10 had already tripled in price by the time he died in 1991. Today? Tooling a new locomotive in the U.S. would result in a sale price of $200 on up for a model of that same $10 locomotive.

@MartyE posted:

You can blame overseas manufacturing all you want but there is a lot of blame on the US company cheapening the product to save a few pennies by changing the design spec to use less material.

True enough, Marty. But I often wonder these days how Bachmann, which owns the Plasticville line, is structured. Since it is owned by a Chinese holding company, Kader, does Bachmann control its production standards? Or does Kader demand such a profit margin that Bachmann has no choice but to cut corners? I don’t honestly know.

Bachmann still does some nice stuff in N scale, but historically the company never seems to rise to the same, near-flawless level as Kato.

Regardless, Bachmann’s or Kader’s lack of dedication to the traditional O gauge hobby these days suggests nothing will change. And Bachmann, or Kader, seems fond of hoarding unused tooling instead of selling it off to anyone, so I’m afraid there is little chance of anyone else making actual Plasticville models in the future.

Sorry, Jim, but your wish won’t be coming true, in this case.

I have some new manufacture Plasticville and it's fine.  I have hot glued some of it together to be child-impervious and I have been very happy with it.  I don't find it to be materially different from the HO Plasticville I had in the early '80s.