Model Railroading > Latest Rapido factory photos...

Hi all,

I am in China, for trip #17. Since 2013 I've always stayed at the same hotel, in the same room. With all the money I've spent at that hotel in the last two years I think I could have bought an apartment here...

Here are some photos in two posts.

1. At the LRC factory, the New York Central FA-2s are all finished and waiting for packing. They have to clean off my fingerprints and drool first...

2. At the Rapido factory, the first batch of "Prime Movers" Dash 8 locomotives is basically finished and ready for packing. This photo was taken on Tuesday and they've come a long way since then. However, we discovered the blister vendor made a mistake so these won't leave the factory for another week while we wait for new blisters.

3. Back at the LRC factory, we are finishing up production of the RailCrew Switch Machines with operating switch stands. I found an electrical problem and Xiong and I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why they wouldn't work. The answer was my power supply was set to 500 mA and you need 1A to make them work. We called in the electrical supplier. He came the next day, looked at the power supply, and said to me in Chinese "Hey, Melon Head, have you heard of something called amperage?"

-Jason

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Before anyone says the usual criticisms, everyone at the factory is over 18. We have to be very careful about that as many girls lie about their age in order to work. Chinese people age differently than caucasian people. Earlier this year I complained to Colin, my partner in China, that one of our tampo workers was underage and we had to let him go. Colin explained that this guy was married with two kids...

In the top photo you can see CPR FA-2 and FPA-2 shells. These were all finished a couple of weeks ago with all parts installed except for windows. We went to give them a clear coat to seal the printing and the painting guy got the clear coat mix wrong. He destroyed 500 shells. We had to fire him. Not for making the mistake, but because he didn't bother to check his work. If he destroyed a few shells, big deal. But he destroyed 500... Since I took that photo about 95% of the printing on the new shells has been finished. They will move to assembly tomorrow.

The factory occasionally makes the same mistakes that I do in my workshop. But I need to fix just one model. The factory needs to fix 500.

In the bottom photo I decided we were short of assembly workers so I decided to pitch in. The girl beside me politely told me to get stuffed.

-Jason

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Can you salvage some of the financial loss and sell the shells as factory seconds? Let the buyer strip the paint and use them for kit-bashed projects or did the paint damage the plastic? I have a couple of GN A units and I believe a B unit ordered. I am excited to see the finished product.
Keep up the good work. We need to keep our hobby moving in the right direction. Who knows, maybe the youth of America will rediscover model railroading?
Mark

Casselton
Houston, TX

Casselton Wrote:
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> Can you salvage some of the financial loss and
> sell the shells as factory seconds? Let the
> buyer strip the paint and use them for kit-bashed
> projects or did the paint damage the plastic?

> Keep up the good work. We need to keep our hobby
> moving in the right direction. Who knows, maybe
> the youth of America will rediscover model
> railroading?
> Mark
>

I doubt that is Jason's cost - it will be the factory's And why would he bring in sub-standard shells which could tarnish his brand and quality?

If it is his cost, then he would strip them at his factory and then re-paint there.

Rick



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/17 08:00 by rschonfelder.

I have to think that these people working in these factories have developed some neat tricks and methods to assembling these models quickly and efficiently with little mess. I would like to learn some of those tricks. Like what kind of glue are they using?

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Wow Jason, they look great. Any chance that you will be making an SP&S version in an upcoming run? The SP&S had 2 FA-2's.

Thanks for the NYC FA photo. Looks great.

Looking forward to NYC cigar band and PC black dip schemes. Please, pretty please, you'll sell me an A-B-A set in each scheme, I promise.

BTW, is the B unit powered? Sound equipped?

funnelfan Wrote:
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> I have to think that these people working in these
> factories have developed some neat tricks and
> methods to assembling these models quickly and
> efficiently with little mess. I would like to
> learn some of those tricks. Like what kind of glue
> are they using?

They use CA, just like we do!

Except they use a heck of a lot more in a given month....

-Jason