Model Railroading > Update from Spring Mills Depot

Received this last night via e-mail, in full and un-adulterated.

"To our valued SMD customers

This email (newsletter?) is long overdue and has been two months in the making. I have become OBE (Overcome By Events – a term we use in the Army). We do apologize for not keeping everyone up to date sooner than this. Some of you have heard parts of this update if you visited us at a recent show or talked to us on the phone. Please bear with the length but there is new information for everyone. So grab a cold one (soda or beer), sit back and enjoy the read.

Just for a refresher, many of our customers don’t realize that Spring Mills Depot is just two model railroaders, who have day jobs, that are having fun getting models made. At the shows, you often see the two of us holding down the fort and sometimes we have a helper. In between the shows however, it is often only one of us trying to take care of running the business and getting models to market. And when life gets in the way e.g., kids, kids extracurricular activities, family, church, emergencies at our day jobs, etc., there is no one handling things. However, we are managing to get things done, albeit slowly. We simply are not built like every other model manufacturer.

There had been a couple of updates to our website but I screwed up the formatting and had to restore the site back to January and I haven’t had the chance to go back and make all of the updates again. The only updates that I have been able to keep up with are the ordering pages when an item is sold out. I expect to get back to the website in the next few weeks as we are transitioning to the next phase of our current project and there will be a few weeks that we will be waiting for the next step. There are two things every project needs to avoid – scope creep and gold plating. The B&O I-5/1/2/3 project was a victim of both. Scope creep set in when we changed the project initially from just the I-5 caboose to then include the I-1, I-2, I-3 caboose classes as well. We did this because we believe the I-1/2/3 would never pay for its own tooling. Gold plating set in when we kept adding more and more details to the cars. Interestingly, the N&W experts showed us a detail on the N&W cabooses that we had never seen before. Then reticular activation kicked in and then we saw the same detail on the B&O cabooses…so naturally we had to include it as well. Eventually Ken and I got to the point where good enough was finally good enough and we would be happy with the B&O I-5/1/2/3 caboose project. My crystal ball is in the shop waiting for parts but had we known the B&O I-5/1/2/3 project would have suffered the scope creep and the gold plating that it did, we would have NEVER announced the DODX flat car or the N&W style cabooses. Honestly, we would have held off on announcing the I-5/1/2/3 as well.

As we mentioned in our Black Friday email to our customers (Nov 2018), we were able to rescue our tooling from our old factory and it has since been relocated to our new factory. This took a lot of effort in finding new factory to deal with, opening up communication with them and with the closed factory and arranging for the tooling to be transferred. This was not as simple as it sounds and took over 3 months to accomplish. This was a great relief to us as well as many of our customers. A lot of you are anxious for us to rerun some of our previous cars but first we have three announced cars we have to get here first. Some manufacturers, who were affected by the factory closing last year, are just rerunning cars with new numbers. They have to in order to keep the revenue stream flowing and to keep their stockholders and investors happy. We feel that it is more important to get our three announced cars here before any reruns.

Some of you have suggested that we bring our manufacturing back the United States. As a US Army veteran of 28 years, there would be nothing that I would love more than to do this. However, the cost of production would be exorbitant. Some have suggested that we move our production to another country but that is also easier said than done. We have evaluated a lot of different solutions and we will keep our production in China for now. With finding a new factory, it is like starting over from scratch. You don’t just walk up to a factory in China and say, “Hey, I want you to start making highly detailed model trains for me.”It takes time to build a relationship so that both parties FULLY understand each other to avoid costly mistakes. Case in point, another manufacturer that was affected by the factory closing last year, just rushed a new car to market. In doing so, they unfortunately made a very basic engineering mistake. We read about it on the forums and couldn’t believe it so obtained a model for ourselves. Sure enough, the defect was noticeable before we took the car out of the box. Upon close inspection, it would have cost less than five cents to correct the problem but now that the tooling has been cut, the problem may never be fixed. We do not want to be in that boat. We work methodically on our cars to insure such shortcuts don’t creep into our projects. One thing we are finding is that our new factory operates on a longer and slower production schedule than our last factory. This can be frustrating at times. I have been trying very hard to have our corrections turned around back to our factory in 24-48 hours – sometimes having to take leave from my day job in order to accomplish this. Then it takes them a week or two to have updates or changes made. Also keep in mind that since our runs are so small, we are not a priority. But as we stated earlier, this whole process is like starting over.

So…we selected a new factory “officially” last December. The first question quickly became – which one of the three cars do we do first? If we look back at the history of what we have produced, our canstock car had 3 builds, our I-12 caboose had 8 builds, and our PD3000 covered hopper had 14 builds. Our B&O I-5/1/2/3 caboose project has 84 builds which is obviously the most complex model we have worked on. It took the previous cars to slowly build up our last factory’s experience to get to the I-5/1/2/3 caboose. But here we are on day one with a new factory. We did not think it would be fair to the new factory nor to our customers to have the new factory work on our most complicated car to date. So we elected to give them the simplest car build first of the three we have announced which is the DODX flat car. We know this will upset some of the B&O I-5/1/2/3 customers but we want to insure when the cars get here, they are absolutely going to be the same quality, if not higher, than our previous models.

As stated in our September email, the B&O I-5/1/2/3 project was completely done on our end and we were waiting for CAD to arrive in the spring of 2018. It still is done and is just waiting its turn to go into production. With the DODX car moving from the number 2 spot to the number 1 spot, this made us shift gears and get the final details worked out on the cars. We had discussed with our last factory an accessory item for the DODX car but it never really got anywhere as we were focused on the I-5/1/2/3 cabooses. Since then that one item has evolved into three distinct items. We believe railroad modelers and military modelers will enjoy these models. They will be available to all DODX preorders customers first at a discount. If there are any left, then we will offer them to the public at regular price. Here is where we are with the current status of our projects. The DODX flat is in the final stages of CAD approval of the 7 body builds – who knew there would be so many? If the DODX car is delivered with no issues or hiccups along the way, we will do the B&O I-5/1/2/3 next. Otherwise, the N&W style caboose will be 2nd which is an easier caboose build and THEN the B&O I-5/1/2/3 cabooses. No matter what, we will get these three cars here. As we make substantive progress on each project, we will notify all preorder customers.

There will undoubtedly be a price increase on all of our cars before they get here.  The DODX flat car because we have to cast two different diecast sills in order to accurately deal with the different brake piping configurations. Diecast is expensive. The two cabooses projects because of the sheer number of variations in their respective builds. However if you preordered, your pricing is locked in for the preordered cars.

Our proxies are currently working on obtaining color chips for the N&W style caboose project.  Currently there are over 70 colors for the N&W style cabooses and we are working with all of the appropriate historical and technical societies to make sure we get the colors right.

We fully realize how long it has been since we announced each of our current three projects.  We understand the apprehension and anxiety this has caused. We are developing a loyalty reward of sorts for those customers that have stuck through this. We know exactly what we are going to do for –ALL—DODX customers. We have a good idea what we are going to do for –ALL—of the B&O I-5/1/2/3 preorder customers and similarly for –ALL—N&W style caboose preorder customers. The issue for the latter two is dealing with all of the variations across the long service of the cars. Now we aren’t talking about some bumper stickers or ball point pens but something substantial. When the cars arrive, we want every customer to be able to say, “It was worth the wait.” The cat will get out of the bag obviously when the DODX cars arrive as word will spread fast. However, only prior preorder customers will benefit as it is the only fair thing to do.

Lastly, let me tell you a little story about one small aspect of developing the DODX flat car. We know what olive green looks like as there are many paint manufacturers who make the color and they are all very close. Similarly, we know what Cascade green looks like. However, the one color that we were having a hard time nailing down was Urethane green. We obtained over a dozen different color chips that probably could have passed for Urethane green but we wanted to be exact. We didn’t want a faded version either (e.g. get a paint chip from an existing car). Eventually we had one of our proxies reach out to the company that actually supplied the Urethane green to DOD when the cars were repainted in 1996. Our proxy said they would sell us a gallon of Urethane green for $110. Our proxy was willing to help us in most any way but wasn’t willing to shell out $110 for a gallon of paint – which is fully understandable. So he gave me the information and I called to negotiate. I explained that we only wanted a sample to color match for our models as their paint would destroy plastic. I inquired if we could buy a couple of ounces or a quart but the company said that one gallon was the smallest amount available. So I bit the bullet and gave my credit card number. The representative told me it would be $200 delivered - $110 for the paint and $90 for shipping. I asked if it was because it was hazmat and he said yes. I acquiesced and purchased the gallon of paint. About 4 days later, FedEx called me and said I was to have a delivery the next day and asked if someone would be home to sign for it. I asked was it a hazmat package and they said it was. I told FedEx that someone would be home but to kindly call about an hour ahead of the delivery. They said that would be no problem. The next day, my wife gets a call from the FedEx driver and he said he could not find our house. My wife explained the landmarks from the main road and the driver said he saw them but he was afraid to bring his truck down our street. She asked the driver if he was in a standard package car and he replied, “No ma’am, I’m in an 18 wheeler with a 53 foot trailer.” She explained that she was glad he didn’t try to come to our house as he would have had nowhere to turn around. So she agreed to meet him in town at a shopping center in a few minutes. When she got there, the driver opened up the trailer and there on a pallet was a small box that was shrink wrapped to it. She signed for it and brought it home. When I got home, I opened the box and it was actually a single gallon of paint that was only 5/6 full and a small can of hardener that was to be added to the gallon. We found some scrap aluminum siding and mixed a small batch of paint. We carefully painted a few squares and now we have exact samples to send to our factory so that our Urethane green cars will be hyper accurate. This is just one example where Ken and I go to the N-th degree to make sure our cars are as accurate as we can make them.

We have heard of several people saying some pretty bad things about us and our ethics. Of course this is a discouragement to us but at the same time we understand the frustration our customers feel. We also understand many have said, we just want communication. We are sorry but there isn’t much information week to week or even month to month. It would be empty for us to say, month after month, “still working on getting our tooling”, “still working on CAD revisions”, “still working on…” We are sorry there isn’t much more to tell you other than this is a slow process, slower than we were used to with our previous factory. We are still learning our new factory and they are still learning us. We are very close to being able to show a substantive update, but “very close” is also relative. We are thankful for the many comments like “we stand behind you”, “we believe in you”, “your cars are worth the wait” but we also know there is a time limit on everyone’s patience. We have not gone into hiding. We continue to be available at the usual shows we attend and we have answered everyone that has approached us. If anyone has any questions that have not been addressed in this update please let us know. It is still our desire and goal to produce the highest quality cars that we can and that we believe the larger manufactures will never produce because they are in the volume business and our selections will not support their business model.   We have many other cars we are investigating but we have stopped all research on them until we get these three, previously announced cars, to our loyal customers.

We want to thank those that continue to stick by us and let you know that we appreciate you very much.  Thank you for hanging in there with us, we believe it will be worth the wait.

Respectfully,
Bill Carl
Ken Braden"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/19 06:28 by NSTopHat.

=mediumWhat =mediumThe =mediumHell...

I received it too, glad to see they are still pushing and moving ahead.  I'm excited about the DODX cars, and their other offerings have been great.  

I am very glad they reached out directly after all this time, and hope updates come more quickly now as they seem to predict.

~RGDave
 

If you can't dazzle with brilliance, you baffle with BS.  We are never going to see those DODX cars.  Some other "reliable" manufacture should move on this project! 

Hello
Scale trains would do a great job. I would not only like to see the flat cars but the cask cars

Gary

HNGDCS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you can't dazzle with brilliance, you baffle
> with BS.  We are never going to see those DODX
> cars.  Some other "reliable" manufacture should
> move on this project! 

Posted from iPhone

The saddest thing about this hobby are empty promises. How many brass importers, manufacturers and producers of ANY GIVEN MODEL OR PART have claimed to have something, even taken our money and left us with nothing. I have become a 'I'll believe it when I see it" person.I miss out on some models but  if you wait, they pop back up.  It's too bad all the guys are not like Morning Sun Books. Every month. On time. Every Time. And before anyone goes nuts about my last statement, YES!! I do know it takes more time to develop a scale model that to print a book. I'm STILL waiting for my SF30Cs from Kaslo.

Did Spring Mills Depot require a deposit on these items?  Just curious as I missed the boat on the announcement when it occurred. 

For the N&W cabooses yes, they required pre-payment. 

I'm actually okay with the email. I mean sure, it'd be great to have the cars sooner of course but as long as things are still being worked on then that's fine.

I disagree with their comment about needing to put out communications every month though even if nothing has really changed. Not only do people like to hear about some of the "unsexy" parts of manufacturing but it's good to know you're still around and didn't just take our money and run. 

JLW2K - Spring Mills has always (with the possible exception of the Canstock car) offered an option to prepay at a discounted rate.  Their policy always has been - and still is - that if you want to cancel your order, you get your prepayment back no questions asked.  I have never heard tell of any exceptions to this. 

gandydancer4 - Based on my experiences with the fulfillment company now handling Morning Sun, I am thankful everyone is not like them  Service at the wholesale level has gone way downhill since they left PA.  Attempts to communicate with the owner have fallen on deaf ears. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/19 08:53 by Chessie.

The Spring Mills Depot guys make good stuff and I'm sure the cars will be worth the wait... 
I'm looking forward to the DODX flats and the other future reruns that should follow after they get over the current hurdles...

If you take people's money, and the project is delayed, you need to communicate on a regular basis even if you have nothing to report. An important rule in business that these cats do not understand. Also too many excuses. They do not seem to have time to run this business but they continue to add projects. They obviously bit off more then they can chew. They do not have time to do so many things but they have time to take your money.

I hope they dig out of this as they are good guys. I know them and are stand up. But with that said, they need to learn from their mistakes and stop making them over and over. Update the darn website already and do not announce any more projects until you have delivered on the ones you have announced.

Bruce