Subject:
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Re: Whither LEGO Steam Trains? (was Re: QT Movie of 4565)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains, lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Thu, 8 Feb 2001 17:58:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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19 times
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In lugnet.trains, Jason J. Railton writes:
> Was there much call for steam models at the Train Summit? Most of the
> pictures I saw where of diesel and electric designs. I know there are
> plenty of people out there valiantly forging driving wheels out of technic
> gears and hubs, which they then have to keep well away from points and
> crossings.
I'm under NDA so can't discuss exactly what was said about what we want.
But what do you think? You wouldn't expect that we would have asked for
things way different that what we asked for publicly in this group and
elsewhere, would you? If you did, you'd be confused. We were in part taking
what everyone said and reading it back, in part drawing on our surveys of
train club members, of the NMRA, of talking to hobbyshop owners, etc. (Yes
it was an honor to have been asked to go but it also was a lot of work)
Except for J2 (just kidding, sort of), we did our level best to leave our
emotions out of it and represent what we knew everyone wanted.
I'm under NDA so can't discuss what the responses from LD were.
But, look at the prior speculation on what sorts of development and
manufacturing costs TLC is likely to incur for various things, how many
people it takes to run a molding machine (I think we came up with somewhere
around .02-.1 person per machine), what sorts of runs are needed to amortise
tooling, etc, etc, etc... all stuff that we publicly speculated on, going in.
Then put that together with the fact that I made a big deal out of thanking
people for the high quality speculation. Do that and you might be able to
guess how accurate that speculation was.
I'll say this. We *thought* going in that new parts are harder to justify
than new colors for existing parts which are in turn harder than using the
old part in a previously used color. Now I *know* how hard new parts are.
Especially when you amortize across fairly small runs. Think about how many
copies of the landspeeder sold and you'll have an idea of what a fairly
large run is for a part.
Train drivers, I am sure you would admit, are likely to be small run items
compared to landspeeders. Even amortized over many years. Even if every
single AFOL buys 100 of them, which ain't gonna happen.
But do not abandon hope. As I said repeatedly before we met with LD, change
in large organizations happens incrementally. Prove the early steps and you
get more authority to do the more radical later steps. There was no doubt in
my mind that I'd be right about that before we met, and I'm just as certain
now as I was then.
Hopefully this answers your question AND Jon Kozan's too.
++Lar
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