Micro Engineering HAS a website. It also plainly states it was updated in 2014. That's the worst of all worlds.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
Yahoo Groups USED to be good, and given that model railroaders tend to be older, it was like old Listserv stuff that many would be familiar with, all managed through email. Yet another Yahoo blunder, their "Neo" update to Groups, totally destroyed the functionality.
Running a forum has plenty of its own issues, chief among them security. And if they allowed picture uploads, they'd need a heck of a lot more storage space - plus they'd be liable for people uploading copywrite images. Don't see what's so hard about linking in images from an image site - just because Photobucket went nuclear, there are, as has been discussed as naseum, plenty of alternatives. Saves storage and bandwidth. When everyone had slow dialup, ALL pictures were small. But now that some people have warp speed and others just impulese power, and still others are running at steam engine speed, you get images of all sizes, and while for many people they load instantly, for some people they still fill in like old dialup days. A different forum I'm on does allow uploads, but of rather restricted size, mostly for storage requirements. You can also link in larger photos from external sites. What this often results in though, is you go to upload a picture and the system gives it a name like myphoto_9.jpg because over the past 3 years, you've uploaded the very same file 8 other times. And that's exactly what would happen here, too. Chewing up any file storage allocated.
As for these small model railroad manufacturers - they seem to be doing fine selling their product through existing distributors, many of them don;t sell direct, and while it's cheap to have a web site built, that's still at minimum several hundred dollars - if you want a NICE site it will cost a lot more for a true marketing oriented graphics designer to build one. I can make web sites - but I'm no artist and it shows. Lots of people can make web sites, but for someone to sit down and come up with all the nice image placement, allow it to work with both desktop and mobile browsers (important these days), have a nice uncluttered layout, it takes time, and I don't know about you, but I don;t work for free. The hosting is the cheap part, there are plenty of providers like mine that are well under $5/mo. It's the talent to create a nice eye catching web site that doesn't come as cheap as you think. And these smaller companies aren;t exactly raking in the profits. A one time $800 expense can be a huge chunk of profits that otherwise might go to upgrading the production machinery - for what return? If the company is selling direct - then yes, they do need a good site to draw people in and allow them to safely place orders.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Bayfield Transfer Railway Reading my mind would be a short story.Also, I wanted to know if anybody else was kind of frustrated by this.
Reading my mind would be a short story.Also, I wanted to know if anybody else was kind of frustrated by this.
Way too many manufacturers websites are just junk, I can think of a lot more than just ME. It is kind of sad. It is not very expensive nowadays to have someone put one together for you. I also would be intrested to see measurements of their #5 forg ladder arrangement.
I wish the model railroad world would get off of yahoo groups too. What a pain in the rear vs. just having a forum.
Of course we have the worlds leading model railroading magazine and we can't upload pictures........
Bayfield Transfer Railway Well, I was being a bit satirical.
Well, I was being a bit satirical.
That is why emoticons were invented, cause not all of use can read minds.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Well, I was being a bit satirical.ME has been advertising HO scale #5 code 83 turnouts in MR for several months at least. I'd love to buy and at least look at one.I put six feeders on every turnout, so I'm not worried about the gapping. My problem with the Peco #5 code 83 is that the headblock ties are almost twice as wide as they should be; they're a real eyesore.
They're listed HERE, but only for On30. Other than that, I've seen nothing. A friend gave me a number of M.E. #6 turnouts, mostly still in their packaging, because he was disappointed in their short length (operation was apparently the issue). He was curious why they'd not offer such good looking turnouts in more prortypical lengths, mainly #8s and #10s.While I like the look of them and the sprung points, they were a nuisance to wire, as everything seemed to be gapped, possibly for use with DCC. Neither he nor I use DCC.Number fives would be useful, although Peco offers a very nice version of their own.
You may have better luck contacting Micro Engineering, though.
Wayne
I want to know more about your #5 turnouts. Kindly update your web site.That is all.