On Fri, May 18, 2012 1:36 pm, Andy Harman wrote:

At 01:22 PM 5/18/2012 -0700, you wrote:

I think I could have done that at Kadee a couple weeks ago. Only needed
some trucks though.

I would love to go on a parts shopping spree at Kadee. They have so many
things no in their catalog - pretty much any part from anything they have,
but only a portion of them are cataloged for retail sales.

I bought ($2) their latest catalog at the Siskiyou Summit meet a couple
weeks back. It's 3/4" of an inch thick or so... when I get it back from my
father-in-law, anything you want me to check for?


--
Jeff Shultz
http://www.shultzinfosystems.com

At 01:22 PM 5/18/2012 -0700, you wrote:

I think I could have done that at Kadee a couple weeks ago. Only needed
some trucks though.

I would love to go on a parts shopping spree at Kadee. They have so many things no in their catalog - pretty much any part from anything they have, but only a portion of them are cataloged for retail sales. For instance the 9' thin frame doors I bought direct, not listed or at least they weren't at the time. And the #78 couplers sans boxes that someone mentioned last week, for those of us with unbuilt RYM kits that require them.

Oh BTW, the last production #78 couplers do not have the "long jaw" knuckles that the early 78s and 58s had - they were upgraded before being discontinued. I checked the packs I have on hand and they have the improved knuckles, same as a current 58/158.

Andy

I think I could have done that at Kadee a couple weeks ago. Only needed
some trucks though.

--
Jeff Shultz
http://www.shultzinfosystems.com

At 10:38 AM 5/18/2012 -0700, you wrote:

Don't know if they still use the shoebox <g> but their web site
lists an awful lot of parts to this day.

After talking with Mike Hopkin at length about this, I'm convinced that a phone call to the parts lady (Mike's wife) is far, far more effective than anything in email. She knows what they really have, and what you're talking about - the person reading the email may not. Which reminds me... there are some things I need.

Andy

Great stuff Jerry! You fill the void.
Clark Propst

Jerry Glow wrote:

Oh for the days you could walk into Athearn with a list of parts and the gal would return with a shoebox sized box of usually all items

Don't know if they still use the shoebox <g> but their web site lists an awful lot of parts to this day. From time to time I get people responding to my blog post about kitbashing SP tank cars and they say, "gee where can I get Athearn parts or car bodies?" I send 'em to the website.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Oh for the days you could walk into Athearn with a list of parts and the gal would return with a shoebox sized box of usually all items

Jerry Glow

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "soolinehistory" <destorzek@...> wrote:

.................

Which is another reason that OEM doesn't work well with parts from China.

Dennis

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Mike Brock" <brockm@...> wrote:

Dennis Storzek writes:

"All that's changed, for the most part, because none of the people you can
get on the phone in North America are really the OEM any longer; they are
all importers that have goods manufactured under contract elsewhere."

I won't argue with the comment "...for the most part", but I will disagree
with the notion that "none" of the people that you can get on the phone in
North America are really OEM...

You know, you are right, Mike. I left out Grandt Line, Dave Granndt, and his father before him, has always understood this, and supported innumerable small manufacturers with good quality parts at pricing that make the kits possible. I understand Don Tichy does much the same. So, I stand corrected.

Dennis

At 04:52 PM 5/18/2012 +0000, you wrote:

Tom has it right, at least as far as the model railroad industry is concerned (and who really cares about computers or musical instruments?)

They're EXAMPLES of industry use of the term, I thought I was pretty clear about that. The term OEM has been used, inconsistently, across many industries, and as you're proving, inconsistently in the model railroad industry as well.

Andy

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "pullmanboss" <pullmanboss@...> wrote:

Andy Harman wrote:

Ah but... Jon [Cagle] who IS an OEM in the literal definition, does not call
himself one.

I suspect, in the case Mike cited, that Jon considers himself a subcontractor. That is, he is providing specialty cast parts that are _not_ part of his own product line, to another party. Unless special arrangements are made, Jon wouldn't be able to add those parts to his line. This is different from Dennis' example.

Tom "just adding to the confusion" Madden

Tom has it right, at least as far as the model railroad industry is concerned (and who really cares about computers or musical instruments?) Accurail sells, or has sold trucks, couplers, coupler boxes, wheels, and occasionally car floors to other manufacturers on an OEM basis. These are all our standard parts... it's up to the purchaser to determine if they are suitable for his purpose. We've also custom molded trucks with different bolster dimensions foe MDC and CB&T in the past, but strictly speaking, these aren't OEM sales, because we can't take those parts out of our stock; we have to set up the mold with special components made special for just this job, and the purchaser has to take the whole part run... which means all the set-up costs get charged to his run.

Jon Cagle is in the same class as Tom is himself... a resin caster who will do custom work. Tom did a little run of parts for me some years ago, from my patterns, for use in some Soo Line society passenger car kits. But they weren't a standard part in Tom's line.

It's those set-up charges that keep some of the neat recent parts out of the mainstream kits. If a manufacturer needs 8,000 parts, we can easily either ship from stock, or leave the tool in the press an extra day next time we run the part, and those parts will be almost the same cost as we pay to put them in our own kits. To the little guys, that 8,000 part order is a major run, and they think that's what's going to pay for the tool. There is no economy of scale beyond the run we are asking for, and quite frankly, if I have to pay for someone else's tool, I'd rather just build it myself. That way, I know that the same parts will be available in the future.

Which is another reason that OEM doesn't work well with parts from China.

Dennis

Now that my printer is back up and producing, I can announce what I've
been working on lately. I finished the Hill road combo door cars with
the addition of a set for CB&Q see:
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/CB&Q_combo.jpg
I added a NP wood boxcar in two schemes:
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/NP_wood.jpg
Ann Arbor rebuild: http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/AA_rbld.jpg
C&NW rebuild: http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/CNW_rebuild.jpg
Rock Island rebuild: http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/RI_rbld.jpg
and some for Stan Rydarowicz in HO but from me for other scales like:
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/URTX-Milw.jpg

--
Jerry Glow
The Villages FL
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/decals

So lemme see if I got this right ... we're essentially the OEM mfgr of our
kids, right?

What's this got to do w/ freight cars of the steam era?

Dave Nelson

Andy Harman wrote:

Ah but... Jon [Cagle] who IS an OEM in the literal definition, does not call
himself one.

I suspect, in the case Mike cited, that Jon considers himself a subcontractor. That is, he is providing specialty cast parts that are _not_ part of his own product line, to another party. Unless special arrangements are made, Jon wouldn't be able to add those parts to his line. This is different from Dennis' example.

Tom "just adding to the confusion" Madden

At 11:12 AM 5/18/2012 -0400, you wrote:

I won't argue with the comment "...for the most part", but I will disagree
with the notion that "none" of the people that you can get on the phone in
North America are really OEM. Certainly I can get on the phone with Jon
Cagle of SC&F and Jon makes his own parts...even supplying the Shake N Take
with parts. Does he make all of his parts? No, but he certainly makes most.

Ah but... Jon who IS an OEM in the literal definition, does not call himself one. That is in a nutshell the problem with the term. It's not used as a self-description by entities that actually fit, and with annoying frequency but those that don't. And its use as a verb is baffling, and I suspect intentionally so - certainly it was a salesman obscuring the origin of his product who first said "We OEM it from them".

The musical instrument business has a slightly vague but ultimately more succinct term... "Stencil". Basically any rebadging of another manufacturer's product. For instance, I have a Wurlitzer C-melody saxophone. Wurlitzer didn't make saxophones, but historians call it a "Conn Stencil", which means it was made by Conn, but "stenciled" with the Wurlitzer name. It's fairly consistent in its usage - as is the similar term "rebadging". If you applied the OEM acronym to this example literally, it would describe the Conn company, and nothing else. Not the instrument, not Wurlitzer, not the dealership, not the process, not the contract, not the horse it rode in on.

At any rate, my point is, if you use the term OEM in a sentence I will ask you to explain and clarify it, every time. And I'm sure it will be another entry on my list, or at least a variant :-)

Andy

At 03:03 PM 5/18/2012 +0000, you wrote:

In the model railroad industry, back in what is fast becoming the distant past, OEM, and "OEM pricing" was used to denote the components one manufacturer would supply to another for use in his kits. The pars were first rate parts, but with no additional work; bulk packed, often counted by weight, maybe not clipped if the parts required clipping from the runner.

Added to the list...

I can give one really glaring counter-example. In the mid 90s I bought wholesale computer components from an importer/warehouse operation to build PCs for my customers. Much of the stuff was generic but they offered a "Microsoft OEM Mouse". At the time Microsoft's ubiquitous "Dove bar" mouse was well above everybody else's in quality and price - Logitech's had all the grace of a sewing machine pedal. But the Microsoft Mouse had a sticker-shock price of $99 and a best street price of $69 or so. The $25 "OEM mouse" was supposed to be as you described, a "first rate part" without retail packaging, for me to bundle with the computer I was building.&#92;. It had the same shape, but a slightly different finish and grossly inferior guts. There are probably still shards lurking under the floorboards of my old house where I spiked one into the kitchen floor - after spinning it around on its cord to build up speed. It was a piece of garbage.

As I said, it's a term used indiscriminantly since the 70s, and probably being used in the computer industry was the final nail in the coffin of meaningful definition - originally it probably did describe what Dennis is describing, although it's really a misnomer even in that context. In literal sense, OEM describes the entity who actually manufactures the part/product - not the product itself, the package, the process, the retailer, or any middleman. But that's taking the acronym literally, which nobody ever does.

Invariably when I bring up this topic, I get inundated with definitions which are quite clear to the definer, but of course all different from each other - thus proving my point. Terms change and evolve all the time, and I accept that - but sometimes they simply dissolve to the point they have no meaning. If somebody wants to do business with me and uses the term OEM, I have to ask them to explain WTF it means in their context, and it never refers to the entity that is the "original equipment manufacturer". So I gotta call BS.

Andy

Dennis Storzek writes:

"All that's changed, for the most part, because none of the people you can get on the phone in North America are really the OEM any longer; they are all importers that have goods manufactured under contract elsewhere."

I won't argue with the comment "...for the most part", but I will disagree with the notion that "none" of the people that you can get on the phone in North America are really OEM. Certainly I can get on the phone with Jon Cagle of SC&F and Jon makes his own parts...even supplying the Shake N Take with parts. Does he make all of his parts? No, but he certainly makes most.

Mike Brock

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Andy Harman <gsgondola@...> wrote:

At 08:16 AM 5/17/2012 -0700, you wrote:

Original Equipment Manufacturer.

As I said, I know what the acronym stands for.

So if you bought an OEM part, it was intended for sale to someone who
would package (and possibly more importantly _support_) it as part of a
larger item. The idea being that you were getting the same quality part,
just without the fancy packaging, possibly all the documentation, and the
level of markup of the same part sold as retail.

That's your definition. I'll add it to the list :-)

Andy

In the model railroad industry, back in what is fast becoming the distant past, OEM, and "OEM pricing" was used to denote the components one manufacturer would supply to another for use in his kits. The pars were first rate parts, but with no additional work; bulk packed, often counted by weight, maybe not clipped if the parts required clipping from the runner. The price was expected to be wholesale, with most of the profit wrung out, to allow the final manufacturer to make the profit on his product. It was also understood that parts sold at this price were not to be packaged and sold as parts in competition with the OEM's own parts line.

All that's changed, for the most part, because none of the people you can get on the phone in North America are really the OEM any longer; they are all importers that have goods manufactured under contract elsewhere.

Dennis

At 08:16 AM 5/17/2012 -0700, you wrote:

Original Equipment Manufacturer.

As I said, I know what the acronym stands for.

So if you bought an OEM part, it was intended for sale to someone who would package (and possibly more importantly _support_) it as part of a larger item. The idea being that you were getting the same quality part, just without the fancy packaging, possibly all the documentation, and the level of markup of the same part sold as retail.

That's your definition. I'll add it to the list :-)

Andy

Allen Rueter wrote:

Tony, no freight car content so...
Richard's book only shows WP mallet & FTs, all steam on the GN side in '47.

But on the other hand,
Was there an interchange point on PFE traffic between SP &WP? I figure SP had a lock into Portland,
worked with either UP or NP into Seattle/Spokane but with competition from WP+GN.

Allen, I don't think there was a specific "interchange point" between SP and WP for PFE traffic, although I would expect a lot of interchange at Sacramento. Most routings were chosen by shippers, but if local agents had a say, obviously an SP agent would try and route the shipment over the SP to Portland, while a WP agent would try and get it routed up the Inside Gateway via WP and GN. It is true that WP's traffic between California and Oregon was barely 10 percent of SP's traffic, and as you say, SP had a friendly relation with NP and a neutral relation with UP in Portland, so routings via GN would have been a minority, if routings were influenced by SP agents. Overall, WP perishable carloadings were a small fraction of either SP or Santa Fe, so I believe those PFE (and SFRD) loaded cars moving through Bieber were largely NOT loaded on WP.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Original Equipment Manufacturer. So if you bought an OEM part, it was intended for sale to someone who would package (and possibly more importantly _support_) it as part of a larger item. The idea being that you were getting the same quality part, just without the fancy packaging, possibly all the documentation, and the level of markup of the same part sold as retail.
--
Jeff Shultz
www.shultzinfosystems.com

Andy Harman <gsgondola@gp30.com> wrote: