Fast Tracks

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Your guess of $150,000 for the lathe has got to be really, really high... I would say closer to $40k. As for $30k for the program, my guess is it comes with the lathe.


Actual I would think I was very low in my Price guess. I worked for a wood working
company in California that uses a computer operated router which cut out wood
plates the shape of Black Angus bulls for a restaurant steak house and it made 5 at a
time. They also used it for a number of other projects but each required a different
program.
The lathe cost $3,200,000.00 (3 million 2 hundred thousand U.S.) written out so
you know its not a typo. and each program were in excess of $40,000.00 just for
12 inch wooden cows. so if they are using computer operated lathes and programs
they're very expensive.

Actually you need to ask Tim and Ron what they use and how they manufacture their
fast Tracks Jigs. I understood that each fixture was made to order and not mass
produced and that it takes a couple of weeks to make them. How every they make
them the do one hell of a fine job and take great care in making sure that everything
they produce is of the highest quality. They also have a great shipping department
and use the utmost care in packaging everything so it arrives in perfect condition.

The bottom line is with fast Tracks you get alot more than you pay for and yes the price is a bit
steep but so is the rest of the Hobby and most of the rest of the hobby can't claim
that you'll get more than you pay for.

_________________
NARROW Gauge MINDED
and Proud of it !!

Like I said, I'm not trying to put-down the FastTracks people.

My guess is the reason there is a 2 week period to get stuff made is those guys have "day jobs" and can't for sure get to a FastTracks order right away... and I completely understand that.

I will insist though that I refuse to belive they have anything near $3.2MM invested in it.

I have a question for you WaxonWaxov, how much time do you have invested in everything included in your layout, including the design time, prep time for the location, and actual stuff. What is the value of your time.

Much of what Tim and the gang at Fast Tracks has done was developed by them and it costs time to do that. In my college classes, one question they always asked is if you do something, what does it cost, and time not available to do something else, costs you something, even if its just watching TV, it does cost something.

I have no idea what the machines and buildings cost them. They have to fund the web site and this message forum, pay for advertising and travel to promote the product. I don't know if you have ever run your own business, but that all gets expensive, especially when you start looking at financing new purchases, and insurance for the building and equipment.

I am not putting anybody down, but cost is really irrelivant, if you want it you will pay for it, if you think it cost to much, find a different way of doing it.

Have a Happy Train day, and may your trains all stay on track and arrive at the scheduled destinations.

Kurt

_________________
Kurt Konrath

SP was king of the road, Cotten Belt will run forever! D&RGW will rule the hills!

Hello WaxonWaxov,

Let me start by saying that I can assure you that none of us here at Fast Tracks are taking World cruises every six months! In fact after a very hard slog over the past five years all of us are still well below the incomes we were earning before we left our 'regular' jobs to start Fast Tracks. And yes, we (three brothers, one wife and a sister) all work full time - with my brothers and I typically working 12-14 hours per day, every day.

There IS a lot more to manufacturing the products that we produce than just pushing a big GO button, but I can understand why you would see it that way. The fact is, getting everything in place to make that go button work takes an enormous amount of time and effort. To make this business work at all, we don't have the luxury of just offering tools for a single scale. Instead we have to offer all of the popular scales - and at the present time that is over 2,000 different products, of which about 700 are assembly fixtures. Each assembly fixture has to be designed pretty much from the ground up to get it ready for the CNC machine. Yes, some scales can be scaled to other scales, but even with that the design has to be tweaked, checked and production files generated. For the first three years of business Tim did this almost full time until we finally started to have a fairly complete library of CAD files ready to cut - but even today we still get orders for fixtures that have not been designed yet. And that only covers the fixtures. The same process has to be repeated for the QuickSticks as well - and there are another 700 of those. And of course there are all of the supporting products. And in about a week we are going to be doubling all of those numbers again with our new Platforms and straight and curved track assembly fixtures.

As has been mentioned by others here, setting up a production shop to produce these products is not an inexpensive proposition either. We have all made a very significant investment so far, not in the millions, but pretty much all of our life's savings combined.

The fact is, our pricing is borderline as it is for making a reasonable return on our investment, and the only reason we can make this work at all is because the Internet allows us to sell directly to the end user. If we had to distribute the products that we manufacture through regular distribution channels and retail stores, we would probably have to increase prices by as much as 30% to 50% as everyone along the supply chain has to take their little cut.

Yes, Fast Tracks tools are a bit of an investment, but we believe they provide extremely good value for the money overall.

Well said Ron. I hope this can put to rest the subject about costs, and get on with what the forum is about. I just hope that nobody to any direct offense to what was said by anybody here, and we all can be adults and take any direct comments with the grain of salt they were hopefully intended.

I enjoy the products and have even finally place my first order. Now just to wait for deliver.

Have fun and enjoy.

Kurt

_________________
Kurt Konrath

SP was king of the road, Cotten Belt will run forever! D&RGW will rule the hills!

Getting Back on Track so to say.
I can hardly wait to see all the Platforms Kits tomorrow Aug 15th when they come
out. I Have been trying to figure out what I'll need and weather Ill buy a kit or order
the random pieces I'll be needing. Maybe a platform kit and a bunch of extras.
I can only hope I still have money in my Railroad Fund for the month of August or
I'll have to wait until the first of sept. when I can get into next months allotment or
maybe both !!!

_________________
NARROW Gauge MINDED
and Proud of it !!

There might be a slight delay on the release. We are very close, but we got a bit hung up with some problems with getting all of the product information ready to upload to the website. Plus Tim decided to make some last minute refinements to the easement Platform pieces, and it will take me a while to make those changes in the product spreadsheets. If all goes well over the weekend I am hoping to have the first round of uploads on the site by Sunday evening.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the release we are doing, here are the current product counts by type:

Straight Track Platforms - 48 new products
Curved Track Platforms - 1,715 new products
Switch Platforms - 315 new products
Flexible Platforms - 61 new products
Fixed Easement Platforms - 721 new products
Adjustable Easement Platforms - 107 new products
Curved/Circle Piecing Kits - 100 new products
Straight Piecing Kits - 49 new products
Curved Track Assembly Fixtures - 179 new products
Straight Track Assembly Fixture - 48 new products
PC Board Pre-Gapped Cross Ties - 16 new products
TwistTie Strips - 19 new products

Overall we will be pushing 3,500 new products being released.

I am pretty sure it will be worth the wait!

_________________
NARROW Gauge MINDED
and Proud of it !!

It was mentioned that some folks are selling fast track jig constructed turnouts on ebay for 25.00 dollars, thats very nice. excellent price, just make sure when you get it
that the turnout is indeed in gauge. I was selling them Number 12's for 50 dollars, because the time involved, the basic turnouts, the addition of more pc ties on the ends. wiring up the three feeders, staining the wood ties, painting the pc ties so they look like the wood ties, gluing the wood ties to the turnout with 30 minute expoxy requires alot more time. In addition the rail is weathered to look like prototype rail. I don't spray paint the entire turnout, although I could and it would save me three hours of work.

Things you don't see is me testing the turnout for micro shorts and giving the turnout a thorough cleaning to insure that the solder doesn't corrode and fall apart after a year of use.

I wonder if those whom are selling those turnouts are even bothering to take the time to insure you'll get a product that will last more than a year or two.

Rob
Prototrack,
keywords are you get what you pay for.

_________________
Now waiting for a better currency exchange rate before I order.

_________________
-ed mccamey-
COSLAR RR - http://www.coslar.us/
NMRA Standards and Conformance Department
PROTO & FINE Scale Coordinator
I estimate I have about 5 pounds of coupler springs somewhere in the vicinity of my workbench.

We have made progress through the week, and should get even further this weekend. We actually have a number of the new Infinite Track System products live on the site now, including the straight and curved track assembly fixtures, QuickSticks crossties (fixed and flexible), and pre-cut and pre-gapped PC Board crossties. You will find these items under their respective categories and scales on the site. Here are links to the HO versions:

http://www.handlaidtrack.com/assembly-f ... c-6_13.php
http://www.handlaidtrack.com/quickstick ... c-3_55.php
http://www.handlaidtrack.com/pc-board-t ... 8_1524.php

The largest remaining part are the Platforms, which we are working on now. As Ed pointed out, having to manually key in the categories has really bogged me down. If the import would work, category creation would take minutes. As it is, it takes me hours for each scale and size and if I make an error, fixing it takes even longer.

It figures The Platforms are last. I want to use them to transfer the 2 Lumber company
Railroads to the 1/2 inch Ply-wood so I can start cutting them out. IF I needed everything else the platforms would be loaded first. Its just my luck LOL.

_________________
NARROW Gauge MINDED
and Proud of it !!