Club cars

[Topo]

Apart from the member's quota, the biggest source of income for the local club to which I belongs (the "Guipuzcoa's Railroad Friends Association"), is the making of two or three "club cars" limited runs each year.
These cars are always based upon old spanish cars of the 30's or 40's, because Electrotren (you know, the spanish model manufacturer that does these nice AmTrak Talgos) have some models of these cars. Some of our members do the research for information & photographies of the prototypes. After that, we supply to Electrotren all the info and pictures (and, usually, the car's loads too), and we got they doing our 250/300 car sets limited runs.
These sets are selling very well

 

[Topo]

Recently, we are going more audacious about the loads. One of our members have an small alluminium works industry and, being the club's geek , I have been "appointed" to work closely with his new CAD/CAM toys, trying to get new loads for our cars.
Our latest "achievement" are this solid alluminium boilers/tanks with metallic supports. They add a lot of weight to these small cars!!

(Hummm... I'm realizing that they would look better with a matte finish)

 

[Tyson Rayles]

Real nice Topo!

 

[Casey Feedwater]

Very nicely done, Topo. Sounds like your club has a good arrangement with the manufacturer.

 

[60103]

200-300 cars sounds like a lot to get rid of.
We ordered 125 cars for the Great British Train Show, received 119, and we still have a half dozen or so left. We were pleasantly surprised that the manufacturer put in a dummy coal load.
We'll probably repeat it in 2004.

 

[Topo]

Thanks Tyson & Casey.

Actually, Electrotren is a bit reluctant in doing real models for us. That is, models that have a real prototype behind.
They have no troubles in doing runs of 250 "bogus" models (fictitious paints or non-existent decorations), but they have started to ask for a minimun run of 400 when "real" models.
Maybe they feel that we are 'standing on their feet' or sort of, burning potential models that they could have released in commercial runs. That is an strange behaviour, because our model's prototypes belonged to short local lines in our area, and Electrotren never have showed interest in doing they (and, surely, they never would release otherwise).

 

[Topo]

David,
Until now, we haven't had trouble selling in the 250/400 range (our biggest run until now have been 450).
We are 90/100 members in our club. Each member is granted one model at cost price, and further with a minimun charge. A few members purchase 4-5 cars; some others don't purchase any, but many purchase the one at cost. This way, we sold around 80 models.
We work closely with the RR museum in our province, and they purchase us (for reselling) another 150 models slighty below street price (of equivalent manufacturer models).
Another 10/20 models are sold to local hobby shops, and another 100 to railroad clubs around Spain.
If they left any after that, we sold they in shows.

We are happy that "our" models are very searched by the spanish collectors (I have seen in shows some 'old' models at 200% of the original price!!).

 

[shamus]

Hi Javier,
The alluminium boiler load looks great, a slight weathering job would make it look real. Nice work.
Shamus