Scale Model Railroad Trains

News -  FREE Spring 2009 Catalog from Atlas Model Railroad Co.

Atlas Model Railroad Company has been busy this Spring of 2009. Atlas has recently issued their Atlas Spring 2009 Catalog. It is available for FREE download here. The catalog lists numerous products being released between April, 2009 and August, 2009 in N scale, HO scale, and O scale. Check this FREE catalog for new engines, railroad freight cars, accessories, and equipment in your favorite scale and road name.

These new and limited run products are being offered for pre-manufacture orders. Don’t wait for final release dates. Get your orders in now so that the Company knows how many of each item to produce.

Unlike most product manufacturers, model train manufacturers set the size of their production runs based largely on the number of pre-orders received months before release. If you don’t want to be disappointed later, you need to show your interest at this stage of the process. Otherwise Atlas, and most other model train companies, will either cancel the production of certain models and paint schemes or make fewer of them.

This keeps costs for modelers lower than if manufacturers took a greater risk (by not seeking pre-orders) and had many unsold trains that had to be paid for or financially justified by very small sales. On the other hand, if they didn’t take pre-orders, the manufacturer’s limited capital could be tied up in unsold inventory and other new products would have to wait even longer until the manufacturer has sold out all of the unwanted stock that their money was spent on.

This process is a little out of the ordinary (when compared to massive merchandising of a very few models of a product distributed through big box stores), but it creates more variety in a shorter cycle, at lower prices, for modelers from companies that are financially viable year after year in a small, specialized, yet quality and price sensitive market.

Have fun!

Trainguy

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