Folks:
That was Arbour's tag line a few years ago. I wonder if it's true again.
Lately, I've been seeing a lot more people working with the Bowser metal loco kits, and with secondhand Mantua equipment, than was apparent for several years. There do seem to be parallels between these days and the days of that Arbour slogan - in both cases, kit building was sidetracked by a plentiful supply of inexpensive imported models, but as their prices went up and up, the kits started looking more attractive again. ("Brass" really did hold a similar niche to today's "high-end limited-run plastic", at one time.)
With any luck, maybe we'll see some of the other old kits come back, or perhaps see new manufacturers jump in...and with a little more luck than we had last time, these new lines will be a little better than Arbour or the Locomotive Company.
As far as I'm concerned, kit building never went away. I'd much rather have a kit than RTR, either for rolling stock or structures. Even Jordan vehicles are kits. There are plenty of them out there if you look.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
MisterBeasley As far as I'm concerned, kit building never went away. I'd much rather have a kit than RTR, either for rolling stock or structures. Even Jordan vehicles are kits. There are plenty of them out there if you look.
I agree it never went away..
The big difference is today I perfer RTR cars and locomotives over kits..I built enough kits in my life time now its strictly RTR.
I still enjoy building structure kits.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I agree. If I have the option of kit or RTR? Kit wins hands down! Sometimes building a kit teaches me something about where things are found on a piece of rolling stock and what they is called. I also have more appreciation and fulfillment in a kit than just buying it off the shelf.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I still prefer kits as well... and lament the fact that so many good offerings today are RTR only. I'd like to see the model companies do things the way the movie industry does... after the item is released RTR, wait about 3-4 months then release it as a kit. I "HATE" spending good modeling money to have someone else build something as simple as an Athearn blue box kit. And so many offerings are one time only.
Can you believe that some Bachmann Plasticville kits are now coming RTR??!? (long sigh...)
Kits lead to kitbashing and kitmingling as well. They are great "raw materials" for other projects. It would be bad enough buying an RTR car but then to tear it apart to get the individual parts??? Nope, not going to happen.
dlm
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
I prefer kits of the craftsman variety. I like having the plans done, the window openings cut and enough of all the right sizes of wood, cardstock, etc. to make a good model. I still have to cut, fit, build it square (or round, or whatever), so my model building skills get some exercise. I also like the way I don't have to figure out how to make plastic look like wood (wood already looks like wood).
These kits keep me busy for multiple evenings - at their list prices, they seem to cost about $1 per hour of building time (pretty cheap entertainment).
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
Plastic car kits are a lot of fun to build. I've been displacing my (ahem) Lifelike trainset cars with Bowser and Accurail kits, and I'm finding these to be very easy and relaxing to assemble, with just enough challenge to keep them interesting. I don't think car kits ever went away, but after putting these together, I wouldn't be surprised if there has been some shift to them, and away from the blue boxes. They're really nice cars for the price.
There's been a huge resurgence in craftsman structure kits, for sure, with the lasercuts. I haven't gotten into them, for various rea$on$.
I guess I was thinking more about metal loco kits, which did seem to go away and come back, in a way that the cars and maybe structures didn't. I do think that there's been a lot more interest in the Bowser locos than there has been for some time.
I wish there were kits for every item in model railroading. Half of the fun is building something yourself. I like to do detail work in my buildings (ex. paint, curtains, furniture, lights & figures), that is almost impossible with a building that is already built. Painting the outside is also much more difficult with a pre-assembled building. My budget has always been limited so kits have always been more attractive.
I have a nice balance of both kits and RTR. I do not want to build a locomotive from a kit (I purchase all my power RTR), but I REALLY enjoy building passenger cars, starting with nothing more than sides. I especially enjoy building my pax equipment this way because I enjoy all the research involved, and tracking down what parts I need from all the different detail manufacturers. I learn a lot, as well as turning out one heck of a nice, prototypical model.
With my freight equipment, I have both kits and RTR. I have constructed kits as involved as Tichy and Red Caboose, and many such as Athearn that take about 15 minutes to get rolling. I have found that is also nice to sometimes pull a car out of the box, put it on the track and be off!!
Autobus Prime There's been a huge resurgence in craftsman structure kits, for sure, with the lasercuts. I haven't gotten into them, for various rea$on$.
I agree the structure kits have gotten pricey, but so have the built-ups. You can easily plunk down $40, $50, all the way up to $85, for some of the superdetailed offerings from Walthers and Woodland Scenics. If I am going to pay that kind of money, I would like to get more out of the experience than just taking it out of the box and plunking it down on the layout.
A good model kit can give you days, if not weeks, of pleasurable occupation.
I have figured out what is wrong with my brain! On the left side nothing works right, and on the right side there is nothing left!
Agreeing with other posters above, I wasn't aware that kit building left. When my sons were younger I was a Railroading Merit Badge Councillor for the Boy Scouts. I leaned it toward the model railroading end and the boys had a choice of a freight car kit (Athearn) or a locomotive kit (Tyco 0-6-0T Little Six). I recall the fun we had together as I helped them build the kits that I have several unbuilt Mantua/Tyco switcher kits of several configurations stashed down in my workbench for the day I have grandchildren.
While I agree that kits never really went away, I don't think kits are ever coming back to the same level they enjoyed before. There's just too many people that want RTR locos and cars.
I am one of them. I prefer RTR, I just can't afford them 100% of the time. My focus is on modeling the New Haven and Operating model trains, not building them. I have to build kits on my budget, so I do so. But if I had a zillion dollars, I'd pay someone else to do that stuff.
Let me put it this way, I spend about 3 hours every other week setting up and running Operations on my layout, and I spend 12 hours or so setting up our bi-monthly Operations at my club. I also spend quite a bit of my time doing electrical work at the club, writing articles in the newsletter, and maintenance on both layouts. Actual time spend model building isn't all that much compared to that.If I wanted to just build models, I'd start building armor and airplane models again.
Paul A. Cutler III*******************Weather Or No Go New Haven*******************
I agree with the other posts -- it never left. I think the manufacturers are hoping to hook the beginning modelers and those who do not want to spend a lot of time building kits. Personally I prefer to build my own buildings and rolling stock; I derive a lot pleasure and satisfaction from building kits and making them my own through modification/painting. This way no one else will have the exact same building. I have visited a number of layouts and have seen many of the same buildings on all of them. Dare to be different is my motto. Just my two cents...
Chuck
Modeling the Motor City
I think it warrants pointing out that in the "golden age" of truly difficult freight and passenger car kits, there were not many large structure kits at all, and indeed most layouts had rather small structures and very little variety. So the person with an urge to build something naturally gravitated to car kits.
Now we have a variety of interesting structure kits. If the goal is to have a nicely finished layout there is not an infinte amount of time to do everything needed; to me it makes more sense to get a ready to run car and spend time on structure kits, rather than buy built up structures and concentrate on freight car kits, but that is just me.
Obviously the word "kit" encompasses a wide variety in degree of difficulty; Bowser and Intermountain cars are very different animals.
While people may (and do) wax nostalgic for the good old days of some truly challenging kits, the Silver Streak, Ulrich, Pacific HO, and other makes, many of them were real bears to assemble into something that looked really nice. Some of the early "difficult" plastic kits in particular were among the worst offenders, I think because slight distortions in the molding process created variances in how parts fit together. A case in point -- the old Kurtz Kraft cars, which sold for a mere 90 cents each, and which were later taken over by Con Cor. Or the Cannonball plastic versions of the old Red Ball kits. You just could not predict how the parts would fit together from one kit to the next.
One thing you can say about the best of today's "difficult" plastic kits is that there are fewer of these variances and they tend to fit together very nicely. For some of us however that means we have lost our only excuse -- if the finished product looks like we can no longer blame the kit.
Dave Nelson
Autobus Prime I guess I was thinking more about metal loco kits, which did seem to go away and come back, in a way that the cars and maybe structures didn't. I do think that there's been a lot more interest in the Bowser locos than there has been for some time.
Didn't we just have a thread about 6 months ago about how Bowser was discontinuing some of their loco kits due to lack of interest??
loathar Autobus Prime I guess I was thinking more about metal loco kits, which did seem to go away and come back, in a way that the cars and maybe structures didn't. I do think that there's been a lot more interest in the Bowser locos than there has been for some time. Didn't we just have a thread about 6 months ago about how Bowser was discontinuing some of their loco kits due to lack of interest??
L:
Yes, and it was relatively easy to misconstrue.
What actually happened is that Bowser started selling all K4, L1, and M1 kits as the "deluxe" version, with superdetail kit included, and at deluxe pricepoint, effectively discontinuing the plain Jane version of those kits. Other kits, for which a superdetail kit was not made, are still sold as before.
I suspect the deluxe kits already sold much better than the standard kits, and recent ones have only been introduced in deluxe form. It was probably foolish of Bowser to use that D word so prominently; it led to all sorts of misunderstandings.
About that time, I bought an H9 from Standard Hobby for $70. At the same time, I was bidding on an auction for another one...which sold for $100 to somebody else. Misinformation makes people do dumb, dumb things.
OK, did they discontinue the Big Boy? That's the one I remember hearing about most.
I for one prefer kits over RTR. If I can get the freight car or building I want as a kit I buy a kit. Even if it means doing a little kitbashing to get what I need. Now if what I need is not avaliable as a kit but as a RTR item them I go the RTR route. Right now the kits I have waiting to be built out number my RTR items 12:1 . A good example is my fleet of 40' boxcars. I have 15 RTR cars and just about 150 kits either built or waiting to be built.
Wayne R
Ontario,Canada