Tim; Yes, I disassembled and reassembled a Kadee car, and it blew me away how innovative it was. It takes me longer to cut parts off a sprue that it did to reassemble that Kadee car. My pondering

Elden, you ever assemble a Kadee PS-1 box car? No glue -- they just snap together. I can do it in 20 minutes, and if I did it for a living, I'm sure I could get it down to 10 minutes. Kadee probably

"Value added"? No, just good old gouging. I was looking at some old oil heat bills from 10 years ago, when I was paying 99 cents/gallon for heating oil. This winter I paid around 350 cents/gallon --

I guess it will depend on whether or not the 82 cents a day they can pay in India will net them more $$ than 82 cents an hour in China, but your point is taken. Given the ~$8 an hour you have to pay

Yeah, this year they've "soared" to 82 cents/hour... :-) I don't think production will suddenly move to another country. China now has a ton of expertise, infrastructure, and a supply chain.

The key question for the manufacturer is their COST vs what they can add to the price. They call this "value added marketing". It might be our hobby, but it's how they make a living. You can bet that

Jerry, Great photo...the ART reefers. It is interesting to note that the variation in colors [ for whatever reason ] is very similar to the appearance of PFE reefer strings. Hmmm. Too bad the ladder

If the link I gave for the article doesn't work, use: http://amarillorailmuseum.com/ and click on "ART Car History and kit instructions" then MPHS Eagle ART Article Jerry

I mistakenly bought Polyscale D&RGW Yellow which turned out to be way too orange so mixed it 50-50 with ModelFlex Insignia Yellow (yes they mix fine). If I were doing it from start, I'd use all

If I remember they thought about building brass in Mexico a long time ago. For some reason building models in Mexico just didn't work. Not sure why, as it seems like a great idea! -- Jon

Jerry, Can you please tell me what yellow you used for your ART cars? Thanks, John John Golden Bloomington, IN

Speaking for a friend of mine that interacts with assembly businesses all over the world, he finds that assembly in parts of Asia can't be beat, and that assembly in Mexico has far more "issues"

You guys are right. The costs of transportation for high value commodities are a drop in the bucket. One can generally ship one Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) container from China to the U.S. for

I add as much as I can to my inventory!! Building my own equipment is a little on the slow side  for I am building for everyone else.   One thing of interest, I have not become bored with building

Blue coal a big seller.Armand Premo

Tim: You are close but no cigars. RTR freight cars in their packaging will not allow you to get 50,000 lbs into even a 53' container. You will cube out before you weight out. I question even

Brian, I wouldn't worry about collecting kits as someday in the near future we are going to lose Sunshine to retirement (Tricia will be 65 next year and she has hinted at retirement) and Al

There sure *were* colors other than green, and in addition to black! :-) For example, check out "blue coal" in the group archive. (I don't know all the colors that were used.) The idea was to create

Global trade and containerization has chopped the cost of transport to the bone. You guys need to get out and watch more trains! I think it costs about $1000 to send a container from LA to Chicago...

Neat assembly of prepainted kits (at least for me) is not all that easy esp those containing tiny parts that need to be glued. I recently assembled my ART reefer kit purchased from the Amarillo RR