Re: [Bulk] RE: [CBQ] Variation in the Grays in the Blackbird Scheme

["Bill Hirt whirt@fastmail.com [CBQ]" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>]

Nelson,

I see a couple of people have chimed in here. I recently worked with someone who is doing work for Broadway Limited. I helped him with pictures and information about their forthcoming CB&Q GP20. He has explained to me a few times about how the Chinese work. What Dave, Doug and Nolen said is the truth. They do things their own way even if sent detailed drawings, patterns/samples for detail parts, paint specs, etc. Note the recent complaint that the Bowser VO-1000s produced did not match the pre-production model (which was correct). It has been explained to me that the way the manufacturing process works in China is the U.S. importer puts up 50% of the manufacturing cost to get a manufacturing slot and then the other 50% is due the day your run is produced. If you don't pay the remaining 50% by production day, you lose your manufacturing slot and go back to the end of the line. Because the U.S. importer/manufacturer has paid Chinese up front for the cost of production, they have little recourse when the product has mistakes due to production errors. After the big bankruptcy fiasco in China a few years ago which took down a major outsource producer (notice how Atlas track went missing for a long time and how a number of Athearn items are now out of production and probably never to return - the molds were considered part of the bankruptcy even though the U.S companies had owned/made the molds and they have never got them back), the parent of Bachmann now pretty well dominates the China production market and most of the U.S. companies work with them. Also remember these same shops in China produce product for Europe and other parts of the world - often in much greater numbers than the U.S. market.

Because of the problems with Chinese manufacture, some producers have brought some of the work back to U.S. Intermountain now does all their sound and non-sound decoder installs and wiring checks in Longmont due to persistent quality control problems. Talk to any manufacturer or DCC manufacturer rep and they all have horror stories about Chinese locomotive wiring.

In another post, someone asked who not move all of it back to the U.S? I had a chance to be in on a discussion with one of the founders of Intermountain at the National S Scale Convention last year. He said because of these problems with the Chinese and the increasing cost of having items produced in/shipped from China, it has become price competitive to have some of the manufacturing done in the U.S. again. Kadee does theirs in Oregon. Bowser in Pennsylvania has their new automated injection molding machine and their increasingly detailed models. Micro Engineering, which produces all of it's model track in St. Louis, is now about 10-15% cheaper than Atlas which is made in China. The problem he said is the assembly with detail parts which can not be done price competitively here. He expected some manufacturing which did not need the detail part work done to move back to the U.S. the next several years and that will allow for better quality control. If people would buy kits, probably more consistent product could be done here. But talk to anyone who tries to sell kits in any kind of volume and they will tell you it is almost always a losing game. As long as people want assembled detailed models (which is where the market is today), the Chinese or some other low cost producer are going to be part of the picture because of the labor and cost involved to apply all of those parts. And that means there are going to be errors with paint, part placement, etc. that goes along with that.

Bill Hirt

On 9/5/2016 7:41 AM, 'Nelson Moyer' ku0a@mchsi.com [CBQ] wrote:

Why not mix the paint in the U.S. and ship it with the molds. I’m sure there must be some creative way to improve color consistency and fidelity. Maybe the importers need to take more control of the manufacturing process. I don’t see the color variation problem with other roads, e.g. UP, but then I don’t model other roads, so I don’t have a fleet to compare.

 

As for desirable variation, I prefer to have a consistent color base coat that I can fade, rust, or make dirty according to the age and assignment of the locomotive. That way I’m in control of the final appearance, and I don’t have to try to hide Chinese color mismatch as part of my weathering process. If you look closely at the two BLI SD-7s in the photo I posted, one is slightly darker than the other , even though they were both in the same run. The only way to have  color control at this point is to buy undecorated models to paint and decal, or in the case of the blackbirds, mask and repaint the gray.

 

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Posted by: Bill Hirt <whirt@fastmail.com>

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