(erielack) Re: Rapido

["Jason Shron - Rapido Trains Inc." <jshron_@_rapidotrains.com>]

Hi all,

After two years of reading messages from this group that people have
forwarded to me, I have just joined.  Please accept my apologies if this
message is somehow formatted incorrectly.  I haven't used a listserv like
this since my days as an undergraduate student in the early 1990s.

I joined because I would like to reply to Randy's comments directly on the
Rapido thread.

Randy, you are welcome to front the tooling costs and we will make accurate
cars for every paint scheme, including Erie. ;-)

With passenger car tooling approaching six figures per car, the only way to
break even in this business is to paint them in as many paint schemes as
possible.  The key is to do the paint schemes as well as we can, and to be
honest about it.  The car has been announced as "based on" a CN car.  It is
100% accurate for.... CN.  That's it.

Will I write "Bogus" on the box for fantasy schemes?  You try that and try
making a living in this business.

You want 100% accurate cars for every paint scheme?  We can limit our entire
line to pre-war Pullman sleepers, as those are the only lightweight cars
with enough paint schemes to only do accurate ones and still make a profit.
Or we can stick with PRR, PRR, PRR and PRR.

Our cars are the most detailed passenger cars ever produced and represent
several years of hard work, with countless hours spent underneath, inside
and on top of the real things in order to get the models spot on.  That
detail comes with a price.  It costs far more to tool a car with every
underbody conduit than a car with 10 blobs under the frame.

I am running a business and I have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay.
Here's some inside information for you: we sold more foobie CN coaches
painted in Erie colors than all of the accurate 10-5 sleepers (in both Erie
and Erie-Lackawanna) combined.

I hear comments like Randy's all the time, and I know I will not convince
everyone of the economic realities of this industry.  But I invite anyone
who thinks we should stick to only accurate paint schemes to answer the
following questions: what would you do if you were in my position, based on
the one statistic I just cited?  Would you stick with only accurate paint
schemes or actually make a living?

Regards,

Jason

- --
Jason Shron
President / Président
Rapido Trains Inc.

True North Locomotives FP9A Locomotive: Beauty.
La locomotive FP9A par Rapido: Sans Pareil.
http://www.rapidotrains.com





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