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Spacetraindriver

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richfiles

richfiles

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Posted (edited)

I used to have a model railroad layout as a kid. I really enjoyed building scale models and it was the perfect outlet for that hobby. I found an unboxed N scale (1:160) train set at an open air flea market  for $7, back in the early 1990s. I got into the hobby pretty hardcore back then, building scale models of many of the homes I and family have lived in, the church we go to, a dorm I stayed in, and so on. That part of the hobby is pretty cheap... Sheets of balsa wood and even cardboard are more than sufficient. Some paints and some scraps of random junk, paper clips, wire, etc all serve as viable materials to build with.

No, it's not the buildings that cost... It's the trains...
Now, N scale was already more expensive than the far more popular HO scale (1:87), even back in the early 1990s... But YIKES!

I just looked online to see what an EMD SD-40-2 locomotive with "Dakota, Minnesota, & Eastern" paint costs... and holy guacamole, those things are typically $129 to $309, EACH! :0.0:

That's not for a train set... that's for ONE ENGINE! :o

Turns out that the manufacturing behind the hobby has vastly shifted from the old days... Many manufacturers were right here in the US (and others were in Europe) and I have heard anecdotal claims that  it wasn't unheard of for some budget manufacturers to actually pass molds around. No joke! Many manufacturers couldn't stock every variation at once, so different companies would make a run of something, then switch off to another item to stock. Another company might use a mold for a bit, while the other company wasn't producing that particular item. It was done to keep costs down. Most model trains in the earliest days were just toys sold to kids in hobby shops and toy stores, and you had your genuine rail fans who liked to build the hardcore layouts, but the mentality back then was to buy the item and then mod it, detail it, weather it yourself, if you wanted something particularly specialized.

Two things are driving up prices, but both are situated in the demands of modern rail fans... First, there's DCC. DCC allows for digital control over your trains. Very cool, but OVERLY expensive... STUPIDLY expensive!!! They've switched to using more expensive can motors with flywheels, and the digital controllers on most trains. Even the "cheap" options still are using the higher end motors, so they can sell them as "DCC ready". That probably doubles the dost right there. Old school layouts were DC analog controlled, and even if you wanted digital control, there's absolutely no reason why a tiny little board with a microcontroller and Wifi, couldn't be put together so you can just control it all from a computer. That'd be a $5 part... Even assuming the 3x raw part to retail factor... That's a $15 increase in the train cost to add digital control by that method. DCC is OVERPRICED, but since it makes control SO much easier, people with money WILL pay for it. It can easily add $80-100 to the cost of a locomotive!

Additionally, a large portion of manufacturing is now either based in China, or is split between US manufacturing of components and Chinese assembly. Due to the greater splits (some manufacturers being all in China, and some not), there's less opportunities for collaboration, like mold sharing. Some companies have literally lost control of their molds... There has been a push towards cheap Chinese manufacturing. This actually caused a lot of problems with poor quality products, but thanks to the quality and detail demanded by the type of model railroader who would actually buy an individual locomotive or train car, it's kinda backfired. To get a sufficient level of quality, it's actually costing more. On top of that, there's the fact that a dollar is worth less and there is a stronger demand for more ready to roll goods, done in more detail, and in more railroad line names... Yikes! It's done nothing but make model railroading into a hobby for kids and old retired dudes, into a hobby for RICH old retired dudes!

The rising costs of manufacturing have led to most manufacturers eliminating budget options altogether, in favor of only selling the more premium models, as they have a higher profit margin. It's not that the trains couldn't be cheaper... There's just enough demand that some hobbyists will spend stupid levels of money to participate in the over priced buying frenzy.

The old local railroad I want to model is particularly tough to model, because they had at least 40 UNIQUELY PAINTED locomotives, each with different markings! That doesn't even count the old ones from when they first started out, that were just other lines with DME markings painted over the other line's logos. DM&E started naming each locomotive after a city on the route, or sometimes after landmarks or people, such as the awesome Mount Rushmore locomotive, that has a painting of the monument on the side of the unit! One of the towns along the route was named after a Lakota chief, and his portrait is painted on the side of the locomotive! Since the locomotives were purchased by DM&E at different times, they cover a wide variety of different models as well. Many are SP40-2 units, but there's actually at least 10 different variants, including the high nosed GP9, the stub nosed, short,  four axle GP40, and there's even more variants! That's some pretty specific stuff, and requires a different locomotive for each variation! Anyone insane enough to model the ENTIRE fleet would need to spend an exorbitant $5.4K, just on locomotives alone... And that's if you get the cheapest ones and decal them yourself! :o

So yeah... Not like I'd have room for a layout big enough to even support that many trains, but still, I REALLY wanna model trains that match up with all the local towns I grew up around, you know... Since the trains ARE named after the towns... There's also the locomotives named after iconic towns and landmarks, like the "Mount Rushmore", "City of Wall", and "City of Sturgis"... My long list of names covers 13 locomotives, all uniquely painted, two with actual art on the sides, not just unique numbering and text. Even my short list is still at least 8 locomotives, and even my SUPER DUPER short list is still 5 locos... And that's ONLY counting DM&E locomotives... I still want at least one or two Chicago & Northwestern locomotives, preferably a high nose model like a GP9, and maybe a single Iowa, Chicago, & Eastern, and a single modern Canadian Pacific (something like a GE Dash-8 or 9, or an AC series)... ICE was a sister line to DME, and both lines came about from CNW, and were both bought by CP, hence why I want some representation of those lines... I DEFINITELY need to get a CNW locomotive though, as they routinely rolled through town for much of my younger childhood, and I LOVE their green and yellow colors. DME's blue and yellow is very good looking, but I like green even more! :sticktongue:

So yeah, even at the ABSOLUTE cheapest... For 6 locomotives, one ready to roll, and 5 needing paint and decals... That'd be $815, not counting paint. That's before I ever lay a single track... Before I even buy a single car to pull behind... And those are $25 a piece these days... $100 for just FOUR measly train cars... :mad:

I'd better build my layout to be weather proof, cause I'm gonna need to live inside it if I want to ever build it... And I thought the hobby was expensive in the early 1990s... Crikey!

**EDIT**

Looked it up... In 1995, I could buy a Chicago & Northwestern SD40-2 locomotive for $40. An SD-45 locomotive was just $30. A GP38-2 was $35.
By only 2001, Some prices were already at $115, though some brands still had locomotives around $60-70, and not all the budget models were gone yet.

Edited by richfiles
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Mark Kerbin

Mark Kerbin

Posted
Posted

Welcome to “Mark’s Pity Party” (Patent Pending) 

Last Friday morning I, got up, got dressed, walked to the top of my staircase, passed out, fell down the staircase, and conked my head several times.

I currently have a very painful headache and can only look at phone/computer screens for short periods of time and reading is just painful. This, as you can imagine, has thrown quite a wrench into my ability to do end of year school projects and to, you know, have fun and maybe work on Kerbal Academy.

I have spent the last 72 hours sleeping, feeling sorry for myself, and binge watching various tv shows for periods longer than I care to admit. Pretty sure I have consumed about 2 tubs of icecream and 1 whole 16 inch pizza.

Thank you for attending, I will be taking yet another nap now.

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LordFerret

LordFerret

Posted
Posted (edited)

I was just on the KSP IRC channel; I posted a message for anyone interested that, right now on C-Span2, is a live interview with Robert Kurson... author of the book "Rocket Men". The discussion is the Apollo 8 program. Next thing I know, someone, a moderator I'll guess, hops in and tells me my post is 'out of context' or some such whatever.

Huh? :blink:

 

Wow. Just. Wow.

 

Edit:
I'm amending this, because it was just a misunderstanding on both our parts. All is good. :cool:

Edited by LordFerret
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Geonovast

Geonovast

Posted
Posted

Soooo hungry.  This diet is going to kill me.  Which really is the most efficient way for it to work, I guess.

Also, there's something behind me that keeps randomly clicking.  It's definitely probably behind me.  But when I turn around to track it down, it stops.  It's very reminiscent of a clicking 3D printer extruder, but neither printer is running and it's too quiet for that.

On 6/8/2018 at 1:35 AM, Delay said:

...

9 PM

10 PM

11 PM

12 AM?

Makes more sense than:

  • 11:59 pm
  • 12:00 pm
  • 12:01 am

It has to switch at some point.  It's not like there's an easier way to tell time by counting to 24 or anything.

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KerBlitz Kerman

KerBlitz Kerman

Posted
Posted

So this last 7 days has ************************ sucked. So let's recap. I strained my wrist a week ago. Two days later I got stabbed by dozens of sharp things for a allergy test. Today my 8yr old Shar-Pei died. Also today my great great uncle died.

AND WE JUST GOT INTO SUMMER TOO!!!!!!!!

On 6/10/2018 at 5:55 PM, Mark Kerbin said:

Why the heck is everyone injured right now...

Did the KSP community have a collective epic fail or something? :P

Hey, you forgot me

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tater

tater

Posted
Posted
57 minutes ago, KerBlitz Kerman said:

So this last 7 days has ************************ sucked. So let's recap. I strained my wrist a week ago. Two days later I got stabbed by dozens of sharp things for a allergy test. Today my 8yr old Shar-Pei died. Also today my great great uncle died.

AND WE JUST GOT INTO SUMMER TOO!!!!!!!!

Hey, you forgot me

Sorry about your week.

I used to have shar peis.

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Confused Scientist

Confused Scientist

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 6/8/2018 at 1:49 AM, richfiles said:

[snip]

That reminds me of something:

 

On 6/6/2018 at 12:10 PM, Mark Kerbin said:

Ah windows 10... I do love you so...

It could be worse. There was an occasion when I needed to make a heatmap of the school campus to show temperature patterns, after which I would need to save it as an image to put it into a powerpoint. For comparison, this teacher demanded that we write all of our lab reports in Word Online but that they also needed page numbers, a feature that is only available in normal Word, so we would create a new Word Online document, select "Edit in Word", insert our page numbers, and return to Word Online. Now, for reasons that escape me the heatmap was already made and I just needed to get a picture of the campus from space. Using computers on the west end of campus (where the IT department is headquartered) QGIS had needed five minutes to load. Using the ancient built-for-Windows-XP computers in the library this increased to (drumroll) forty-five minutes: the length of the entire class period. Finally, my science teacher just told me to use Google Maps for the satellite image.

 

My secondary complaint is that for some reason Driver 8 was briefly replaced by a 1970s McDonald's ad. Clicking "Edit" and changing nothing fixed it.

Edited by Confused Scientist
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GDJ

GDJ

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, KerBlitz Kerman said:

So this last 7 days has ************************ sucked. So let's recap. I strained my wrist a week ago. Two days later I got stabbed by dozens of sharp things for a allergy test. Today my 8yr old Shar-Pei died. Also today my great great uncle died.

AND WE JUST GOT INTO SUMMER TOO!!!!!!!!

You've had a crappy week. Hope it shapes up better soon.

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Delay

Delay

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Geonovast said:

It has to switch at some point.  It's not like there's an easier way to tell time by counting to 24 or anything.

 

7 hours ago, YNM said:

There's a reason why the 24 hr clock exists.

I know, but I was complaining about what I would consider premature use if "am". 12 pm as a "followup" to 11 pm would just make more sense. Instead, 11 pm is one hour before midnight and 12 pm is noon?

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YNM

YNM

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, Delay said:

I know, but I was complaining about what I would consider premature use if "am". 12 pm as a "followup" to 11 pm would just make more sense. Instead, 11 pm is one hour before midnight and 12 pm is noon?

The key lies in caling it "0 AM" and "0 PM" being rather absurd.

Here, the difference is just "12 siang" (12 in day) and "12 malam" (12 in night). Other times would be ex. "5 pagi" (5 morning) and "5 sore" (5 afternoon), "7 malam" (7 evening) and "7 pagi" (7 morning).

Maybe you shouldn't have mucked about with where is it wrt "midday" (post meridian : after midday; ante meridien : before midday) and just call what part of day is it.

(I have to admit that we have rather consistent day length, so the sun will always reasonably rise around 6 in the morning and sets 6 in the afternoon.)

Edited by YNM
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NSEP

NSEP

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Makes more sense than:

  • 11:59 pm
  • 12:00 pm
  • 12:01 am

It has to switch at some point.  It's not like there's an easier way to tell time by counting to 24 or anything.

Or just start at 00:00? 00:00 am at night and 00:00 pm in the middle of the day?

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KerBlitz Kerman

KerBlitz Kerman

Posted
Posted (edited)
15 hours ago, tater said:

Sorry about your week.

I used to have shar peis.

We foster Shar-Peis. We work with NASPR to help dogs find a home. However, sometimes we won't put him/her up on the website, we'll just adopt them, which happened to him. That poor guy was dropped in someone's truck at the age of six months in Walmart. We've had that sweetie for eight years now....

Edited by KerBlitz Kerman
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RealKerbal3x

RealKerbal3x

Posted
Posted

I had an exam in both of the first 2 periods this morning.

The first one was biology and I'm OK at that, but the second was Spanish which I'm totally rubbish at.

Next up, a maths exam which I will most likely get less than 50% in, and a chemistry one that I'll get 70% in, at most.

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