The Ready-To-Run Market vs. the Hobbyist!
(The view from Custom Traxx)
***

Some of us thought that the day would have come when kits would disappear. Our hobby, especially HO traction, was mostly kits. It seems like yesterday when the main staples of HO traction were the Pennsylvania Scale models 1948 era PCC, 1906 era Brill Suburban and 1931 IRR interurban. Of course, there was the Mantua Single truck streetcar with one axle powered. For the serious modeler there were brass models, but you still had to paint and letter them.

The Bachmann PCC and Brill streetcars offered Ready-To-Run streetcars but they had their limitations.

When Bowser decided to enter the RTR field with the all-electric PCC in 2007, we thought that this would have an effect on the hobby but what followed was even more surprising. Bachmann entered the market with the Baltimore Peter Witt. Con-Cor offered the Electroliner and the air-electric PCC and Bachmann followed their Peter Witt with a four-wheel Birney Safety Car. This has had an even more effect on the traction hobby. Now we have factory-installed sound already in the Bowser PCC and in six-months there will be a factory sound equipped New Orleans streetcar.

The day of reckoning appears to be close if not her already. while the sales of the RTR trolleys had been at the levels expected, sales of parts, decals and ORR track have not been at the levels previously experienced.

Custom Traxx told the Times late last month that decal purchases have reached the level that not only are new decals sets not likely to be made but reorders of decals sets already produced may not reoccur.

___________________________________________

Richard Orr - A Traction Modelers Legend!

***

Richard ORR, who gave HO scale traction modelers the simulated girder rail and street turnouts and crossings that they have used for many years, died on July 19, 2013. The following article appeared in the local newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska:

Time couldn't derail Dick Orr's passion for streetcars!
By Michael Kelly / World-Herald columnist

Like the trolleys he loved, streetcar enthusiast Dick Orr has reached the end of the line. He filmed Omaha's last streetcar run in 1955 and long hoped for a renewal of a streetcar or light rail system in Omaha.
While mayor, Hal Daub once promised him the first ride on new streetcars. But Dick told me 14 years ago: “I don't think I'll ever see them.” He did not. Richard Orr died July 19 at 88. “He was just a wonderful guy,” said Daub. “I got to know him when I served on a transportation subcommittee in Congress (in the 1980s), and he gave me his insights.” People die, but hopes for a streetcar line seemingly never do. Daub, a proponent, said the idea “has been pretty much studied to death.”

A streetcar line is one option in a $1.3 million, 18-month transportation study underway for the Metro transit system. It is funded with a $700,000 federal grant and local contributions from various institutions, including the City of Omaha.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit Emerging Terrain this month proposed a light rail system on the old Belt Line railroad path — built in the 1880s and abandoned in the 1980s — that extends from north Omaha through South Omaha and into Bellevue. As mayor from 1994 to 2001, Daub pushed for a streetcar loop that would connect Creighton University, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the midtown area with downtown, plus a stretch on South 10th Street to the zoo. With rising costs, he acknowledged last week that getting a streetcar system on track becomes difficult. Because of potential costs, Mayor Jean Stothert has not supported the idea.

Kansas City, Mo., is building a $102 million downtown streetcar line funded largely with a 1-cent sales tax for 25 years in a “downtown streetcar district.” The line, scheduled to open in 2015, is designed by Omaha-based HDR Inc. Oklahoma City had planned to have a streetcar line by 2017, but the effort stalled this month when local commissioners raised questions. If Dick Orr was something of a romantic on the subject of streetcars, he had a personal reason. As a young man, he took a certain streetcar because he had his eye on a certain rider named Martha Ann Neuhaus. Streetcars didn't last, but the couple's marriage endured — more than six decades.
“Dick was versatile, interested in everything,” Martha Ann said. “He always wanted to conserve our world and all of its resources. We recycled everything we could, and we're continuing that — donating his body to medical science.” His body wore out with age, including two strokes and a heart attack, but he had taken very good care of himself. He ran 22 marathons between the ages of 50 and 60, including Boston's.

He worked four decades in the printing business. In his basement, he made parts for model streetcars and trains that sold internationally. They were known as “ORR PARTS.” For years, the family took vacations in a 1965 Studebaker modified for sleeping. He owned it from age 41 to age 82. Dick wrote two books about streetcars. And in 1999, he gathered the 8mm home movies he had shot long ago, producing a one-hour, 47-minute video, “Streetcars of Omaha and Council Bluffs, 1947-55.” The video was more than just film of streetcars, though. It provided a treasure-trove of postwar Omaha pictures. It included glimpses of such bygone landmarks as the Metz Brewery, the Admiral, Beacon, Chief and Military Theaters, the Nebraska Clothing Store and the old Woodmen of the World building. Also, as narrator, Dick said, “the infant Nebraska Furniture Mart.” He was pleased in 2002 when a wall sculpture was unveiled at Happy Hollow Boulevard and Underwood Avenue, a tribute to the Dundee neighborhood's streetcar past. Local residents helped raise $130,000 for the sculpture. Dick appreciated stability — 41 years with a car, 53 years in one house, 62 years with his wife, 71 years at St. Paul United Methodist Church, 5410 Corby St.

A memorial service will be held there at 3:30 p.m. on August 18. Another will be held at 10 a.m. on August 19 at Skyline Manor, where he and Martha Ann have lived in recent years. He is also survived by daughters June Roberts of San Francisco and Wendy Smith of Minneapolis. A 1942 graduate of Benson High, Dick enjoyed the mature trees and homes of the Benson neighborhood. He helped restore the old Omaha streetcar on display in the Durham Museum — and when he visited, he would always turn the streetcar's destination sign to “Benson.” He often lamented that people were “married to their cars” and noted that mass transit is more energy-efficient. Hal Daub says it's just a matter of time. “Someday all urban areas like ours will have commuter light rail,” he said. “I think the idea has new legs and new life. If it happens, we can give a little of the legacy and credit for keeping the idea alive to Dick Orr.”