The Rapido Great Model Railway Survey

[TheEngineShed]

The format was quick and the questions reasonable.  The only one I suffered over was whether you are primarily a collector, builder, or operater...

[Wickham Green too]

I was a little stumped on the close-coupling issue ...... yes tenders should be close-coupled to their locos - but rolling stock doesn't need close-coupling tensionlock whatsits as I'll fit three-link / screw or buckeye ( Kadee ) couplings as appropriate !

Edited December 20, 2021 by Wickham Green too
spilling

[Jonboy]

The one I struggled with was preferences on where to buy, I go online due to the lack of any local retailers, rather than because it’s the lowest cost.

[G-BOAF]

Just spend 10m filling out the survey and come back with "There are errors on the form. Please fix them before continuing."

Happy to help, but not happy to wade through PAGES for form submission to fix error without being told where it is... GRRRR

 

[F-UnitMad]

Interesting the last few questions were about O Scale. I chose the cheapest "what price?" options, naturally.

Now if only Rapido U.S. were brave enough to start kicking butt in 1:48 2-rail O Scale....

 

 

[melmerby]

Done it.

No problem, although a little restrictive for certain answers.

[john new]

Completed but it includes a few poorly worded questions, example, the one about your adverts - yes they are striking but no they haven't made me buy anything - the reason you haven't yet produced something I want. Example - I like your buses but don't need West Mids liveried examples.

 

From memory - the one's to chose an era - under primary contemporary preserved is not given as an option.

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by john new
typo - doubled word

[melmerby]

1 minute ago, john new said:

Completed but it includes a few poorly worded questions, example, the one about your adverts - yes they are striking but no they haven't made me buy anything - the reason you haven't yet produced something I want. Example - I like your buses but don't need West Mids liveried examples.

 

From memory - the one one to chose an era - under primary contemporary preserved is not given as an option.

Maybe there should have been a question or two about road transport vehicles?

Likewise, although superb looking models, the "Brummie" buses, very much of my locale (having travelled on them to school & work) are not for my railway layout.

 

[Opelsi]

Worked fine for me!

Good to see a proactive engagement by a manufacturer.

Has to be one of the best ways to gauge the market.

 

[Wickham Green too]

12 hours ago, melmerby said:

..... buses, very much of my locale (having travelled on them to school & work) are not for my railway layout.

Yep, unlike goods wagons, buses were never Common User. My local operator has been 'done to death' by every model bus manufacturer under the sun - but the 'classic red double decker' would look totally out of place on the vast majority of layouts !

[Neil]

It will be interesting to see how meaningful the results will be, I can imagine many wanting all the bells and whistles offered in the specifications section and then wanting the lowest prices in the cost section. It might have been more instructive to ask ' would you pay more for .....'

[john new]

1 hour ago, Neil said:

It will be interesting to see how meaningful the results will be, I can imagine many wanting all the bells and whistles offered in the specifications section and then wanting the lowest prices in the cost section. It might have been more instructive to ask ' would you pay more for .....'

Agree, I put a lot of one star ratings against things like sprung buffers that I don’t need, personally can’t see a need for either for 95% of modellers, and up the cost unnecessarily. Nicely turned buffer shanks yes, don’t need them to be sprung, it was a nice feature to know was there on the old PECO Wonderful wagons but pointless.

[G-BOAF]

15 hours ago, G-BOAF said:

Just spend 10m filling out the survey and come back with "There are errors on the form. Please fix them before continuing."

Happy to help, but not happy to wade through PAGES for form submission to fix error without being told where it is... GRRRR

 

Turns out there was one question I had not answered.

BUT I had to click back through all of them to find it. Really stupid webform design. Wouldn't take much to have a 'fix errors' button which takes you straight to the erroneous question....

[melmerby]

57 minutes ago, john new said:

Agree, I put a lot of one star ratings against things like sprung buffers that I don’t need, personally can’t see a need for either for 95% of modellers, and up the cost unnecessarily. Nicely turned buffer shanks yes, don’t need them to be sprung, it was a nice feature to know was there on the old PECO Wonderful wagons but pointless.

No doubt sound merchants will put 5 stars for things like extra speakers, whilst non sound people, not wanting the extra cost will put 1 star.

The result will be a meaningless middle of the road rating.

IMHO it needed a pre qualifying question on sound.

Edited December 20, 2021 by melmerby

[Steamport Southport]

18 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Interesting the last few questions were about O Scale. I chose the cheapest "what price?" options, naturally.

Now if only Rapido U.S. were brave enough to start kicking butt in 1:48 2-rail O Scale....

 

 

 

I did that as well. I also dabble in O but don't buy RTR. So I put the prices I would pay which is probably lower than the RTR prices at full RRP.

 

 

Jason

[Covkid]

Completed the survey and agree with the person who made the distinction between steam and diesel.  But....... it is probably difficult to manage the data from like this. I personally like diesels steam and multiple units in equal measure so the Swindon Cross Country unit in green would be absolutely fine RapidoAndy.  Obviously you can cater for many of the differences with tooling slides, and over the life of the moulds.   

[adb968008]

4 hours ago, john new said:

Agree, I put a lot of one star ratings against things like sprung buffers that I don’t need, personally can’t see a need for either for 95% of modellers, and up the cost unnecessarily. Nicely turned buffer shanks yes, don’t need them to be sprung, it was a nice feature to know was there on the old PECO Wonderful wagons but pointless.

Might be pointless, but everyone presses them.

psychological value..

 

its a feeling of quality when you don't have them ,it feels cheaper, and the next thing I do is look at how much I paid.

 

If I do feel them, I continue looking at the detail and enjoy it.

 

One manufacturer made a big deal over removing them, saying exactly the above with regards to pointless etc…but I noticed they quietly reversed that decision in the last few years.

Edited December 20, 2021 by adb968008

[Wickham Green too]

As one of the minority who does actually use spring buffers on all stock ( and can happily propel 60+ wagons into a siding as a consequence ) I think it's pretty obvious which way I voted on this matter !

The one feature offered a few years ago that I found totally pointless was rubber gangways ....... they were generally misshapen, they never met closer than plastic ones and if they had met they were stiff enough to drag a coach off the rails rather than bending gently as they should : a total waste.

[No Decorum]

8 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Might be pointless, but everyone presses them.

psychological value..

 

its a feeling of quality when you don't have them ,it feels cheaper, and the next thing I do is look at how much I paid.

 

If I do feel them, I continue looking at the detail and enjoy it.

 

One manufacturer made a big deal over removing them, saying exactly the above with regards to pointless etc…but I noticed they quietly reversed that decision in the last few years.

I like them. My son-in-law always presses them on any model I show him so that I’m reluctant to show him something without them. As you say, psychological value. If the buffers are fixed, I feel as if they’re letting the side down.

 

Then there were Hornby’s Thompson non-gangway coaches. The couplings were a cock up but the buffers were large and sprung and Kadees got them close coupled and touching on curves without locking. Radius 6', so I suppose a bit specialised.

[Steamport Southport]

Considering many manufacturers are now providing proper couplings I reckon that sprung buffers are virtually essential. Far more important than gimmicks like sound and flickering firebox glow IMHO.

 

Why spoil the ship for an ha'porth of tar?

 

You literally would just be saving a few pennies by omitting them and I doubt that saving would be passed on to the customer.

 

 

Jason

[Neil]

For many years I used three link couplings and had a mix of solid and sprung buffers, absolutely no difference in performance.

[MarkSG]

On 20/12/2021 at 11:21, melmerby said:

No doubt sound merchants will put 5 stars for things like extra speakers, whilst non sound people, not wanting the extra cost will put 1 star.

The result will be a meaningless middle of the road rating.

IMHO it needed a pre qualifying question on sound.

 

You're assuming that the only thing measured is the average of responses. In reality, that's not true, at least not if the people designing the survey and interpreting the data know anything at all about how to analyse statistics. In statistics, the average is usually one of the least informative values of a dataset.

 

For example, for this particular question, if 50% of your respondants give five stars to extra speakers, and 50% give it one star, then what you know is that there are probably enough people who would be willing to pay extra for it if you do it as an option, but it's likely to hurt sales if you do it on everything and price accordingly. On the other hand, if everybody gives it three stars, then what that probably means is that nobody really cares enough about it to make it worthwhile. Same average, but entirely different conclusions.

 

Amazon reviews are a good example of how to interpret a different spread of ratings. If you've got a product which has mostly four-star reviews, and a handful of threes and fives, then it probably is a fairly good product, nothing special, but is at least reliable. If you've got one which is mostly five-star reviews but a significant number of one-star reviews, and hardly any in between, then the chances are it's a product which is excellent when it works, but has quite a lot of duds that need to be returned for a refund. Again, both will have the same, or similar, average rating, but a very different spread. And the spread is more informative than the average.

 

 

 

[JR_P]

I think it would probably have been more useful if the “what scale do you model” question was up front - I model N, but I still got all the sprung buffers questions which I promise you really is completely obsolete for N gauge…. my conclusion was that it was a very OO-oriented questionnaire…. still a useful exercise overall though I would imagine.

 

The sprung buffers questions all got one star from me  !!!

[CUCKOO LINE]

No survey will be perfect, at least they are trying to find out what people want. I agree with the one who said that the way it is analysed is key because you can get a lot of info from a varied set of questions. 

[mdvle]

15 hours ago, JR_P said:

I think it would probably have been more useful if the “what scale do you model” question was up front - I model N, but I still got all the sprung buffers questions which I promise you really is completely obsolete for N gauge…. my conclusion was that it was a very OO-oriented questionnaire…. still a useful exercise overall though I would imagine.

 

The sprung buffers questions all got one star from me  !!!

 

But they will (if they desire) be able to manipulate the data to filter results based on other results - so for example they will be able to filter the sprung buffer answers based on scale and see what the responses are in each scale.