My son told me last night that he got a quarter pounder, a large fry, and a large soda at
McDonalds and it was over $10.00. That is insane. I don't eat at McDonalds, but he needs
something quick at work and they are close. I think I need a raise in my social security.

 

I think I need a raise in my social security.

No doubt! Sure isn't keeping up with prices out there.

 

But let's get back to the topic of model train prices today.....what do we get for the money today that we didn't get 30 years ago? Is it really that much more money, given the product, than what it once was?

Let's have some thoughts on this one.....

 

Well today that same engine is $120 plus

 

I used this calc. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

To come up with a price equivalent today of about 43$.
From 1999.

 

You get better reliability and quality. The drives have improved, the motors have improved, the details have improved. It's not quite a whole 'nuther world, but it's getting up there. Also, with digital control, it's a whole 'nuther experience in how trains run.

 

I paid about that for an Athearn Blue Box model about 5 years ago. There are too many qualitative differences over the last 20-25 years to make a fair comparison.

I mean, sure, we'd all love it if you could go downtown, have lunch, buy a locomotive and a couple of cars, and come home, having spent less than $50, but that's never gonna happen.

 

Lunch and downtown parking will cost you that now-a-days.....let alone adding in a locomotive and cars....

 

Or Germany and Austria with expensive labor, excellent engineering, quality components, and excellent QA?

 

Lol!

What I'd like to know is why is shipping these plastic locomotives so expensive?

I had a desk delivered recently right to the room is was going into for $29.
2 N scale diesels and a 4 car passenger set shipped from Trainworld for $19.89.

:dunno:

 

Because the livery company that delivered the desk doesn't have the overhead costs of the big shipping companies.

And it's not just shipping, but shipping and handling, which also includes the packaging and paying the warehouse worker to pick it.

 

Ive noticed that a lot on ebay. With shipping on a lot of things its cheaper to buy new.

 

A personal whine: How did shipping containers get too expensive to use as scenery? Not that long ago, you could get a pair of N scale 20-footers for < $10. Now they've all got some sort of fancy magnetic interlocking system and go for > $20 a pair. For scenery, BLMA has made a new run of 16-ft PODS in N scale for ~ $10 a pair so I'll be using those - but who can afford to put together a long intermodal train at prices like that?

 

You can make some pretty fine looking ones out of paper / cardstock. There are kits available, or you could freelance it from photos.

 

If you see high shipping prices on ebay, it has nothing to do with the actual costs of the product. The seller is just trying to gouge people for more money. It's a sneaky tactic that you need to watch out for and is quite often used on auctions to make sure a minimum price is met for the sale (rather than properly setting a minimum bidding price on the auction). I always try to avoid those sellers because they've already shown where their priorities lie, and if you have any problem once you receive the item you will likely never hear back from the seller.

 

i found some printable containers online some place i downloaded them and got them saved for future use. not sure i can put them on here or not , but if you google printable shipping containers i think you can find them. you just print them out and cut then glue . they look pretty nice to me. humm now i got to dig in my puter to find them. hahahahaha

 

Guys, I am an American flyer runner/collector today but about 25 years ago I had a large Ho layout comprised of Athern, Atlas, and Kato locomotives. It seemed to me they all ran well with Atlas and Kato engines my favorites. Those weren't cheap then. The detail was fine with me. I had 100+ Blue box cars and 54 Atlas cars as well running on nickel track. I never got into the DCC stuff. Always relied on good quality MRC transformers. My point? All this modern stuff is nice and fine but it isn't a requirement.
I have always collected American Flyer but at the time I didn't have adequate space so it was HO or nothing.
I still have every bit of my HO trains, track, Peco switches, buildings, etc stored away. I finally bought the right house with space to build an American Flyer large layout and run my first love of trains, American Flyer. The lessons learned about detailing that HO layout have helped me create my American Flyer layout.
It's all good and as I said the other night over on the S gauge forum, "trains is trains".