Just some forum stats, promoting our community, rambling on...

[nodcc4me]

The answer to that question is this: The more folks using RP, the more money Ring will make and the more new products we will see as it becomes mainstream. Maybe they don't see it that way. 

[Alan]

... the more money Ring will make and the more new products we will see as it becomes mainstream.

Or simply the more money Ring will make.

Sorry guys, I am with Darryl on this issue. With all the world's pressing societal needs I don't understand why, if you are willing to volunteer your time and resources, it would be spent benefiting a commercial entity. Especially one that hasn't asked, doesn't actively engage the user base, and seems content with their current situation. Does RP even have a Facebook page? I can't find one.

More is not always better to everyone. What if Tim Ring is perfectly happy with his business volume as it stands?

[nodcc4me]

More is not always better to everyone. What if Tim Ring is perfectly happy with his business volume as it stands?

I would have to believe that is the case. I can't think of a better reason not to promote it.

[William Brillinger]

More is not always better to everyone. What if Tim Ring is perfectly happy with his business volume as it stands?

I would have to believe that is the case. I can't think of a better reason not to promote it.

Ring Engineering advertises reasonably heavily in MRH. Speaking as a small business who has advertised in MRH, I can tell you, MRH is quite capable of overwhelming me with business. In fact so much so that I had to considerably scale back my advertising in MRH.

I don't want a bunch of employees, so I have to work at keeping things manageable in my own business. It's not hard for me to imagine that Tim Ring is in the same boat. Although I would like to see him have a few more employees, so he can spend his time developing instead of producing an supporting, I imagine the advertising he does do keeps him very busy as is.

The reason for not advertising in MR? Easy, why spend 3K on an ad that will simply overwhelm your resources? Until Tim has an army of staff and equipment to handle the calls and production, I'm sure he wants to keep the growth under tight control.

Regarding having a booth at a show, there would be nothing stopping a retailer such as myself from taking RP to a show, if I had time to attend shows. (Thank you MRH!)

Regarding MRH, Joe Fugate has expressed interest in running an updated story about RP to me. I've been waiting for the next generation of sound and such to arrive before tackling the subject, since currently it's not that much different than the original product covered in RH a few years back.

A story about Lee's layout and his RP experience would certainly be welcome at MRH.

[G8B4Life]

Darryl and Allan,

I get what you are saying and respect it wholly but strangely I seem to recall making the same argument about giving away pictures and sound recordings away for free for another's commercial gain before being told how horrible my take on that was. Yes the benefits of the pictures and recordings comes back to us but so does the benefits of promotion.

With that out of the way I would like to stress that in no way have I ever thought of promoting RE. What I want to promote is the system, not who makes it (like people promote DCC as the control system of choice, not necessarily the DCC system they use. Unfortunately RE is the only manufacturer of RailPro in our case.). It's a fine line to draw I guess but given the current data we have available to us we have a weak user base compared to other control systems and a weak community size to go with it. I want to improve that. It's the system I use, it's a great system and I want to see it grow.

It's a good point about business volume and one I had thought of previously as well but I'll ask again, if the workload is high enough to warrant a single RP ad in MRH per month and that's all the business promotion you need to do then where are all the users? Surely more would have found there way here by now?

Lastly, please don't anyone get the idea that I'm slamming RE in any way, all I want to do is grow the system and our community and I can only work with the limited data we have available to us.

- Tim


 

[TomO]

Allan, thanks for the info about the signature

TomO

[jimw]

I just noted a new RailPro thread on MRR's website under 'electronics and DCC'.  In view of the preceding discussion, perhaps it would be beneficial for someone with more knowledge than me to help that (widely read) forum give a better description of RailPro to it's readers.

JimW

[JJ Crooke]

...I don't post very much but I check this site out everyday to see if anything has come up. It has served me well but I am not very good in electronics like some of you are so I can't contribute in that manner... but you all have helped me in all of the threads posted in this matter.

Don't get discouraged because some of us don't post. We READ... WE GLEAN

Same for me here. I visit the site every week, sometimes more often but I rarely post. My model railroad time is limited so I prefer to quickly glance over the most recent discussions and spend most of my spare time building and running my layout and planning my ops sessions. I will start running ops sessions with my regular (DCC-only) group soon and introduce them to RailPro. I'll be ready to deflect their DCC-biased opinion because I know that most of them will be closed-minded with RP, especially with comments like "you made a big mistake... RailPro is a proprietary system and I would never invest any money into something that may not be here tomorrow." Of course they might not admit to liking some of RP's cool features but I'm ok with that. It is my money, my layout and I love RP... and that's all that matters to me!

[Alan]

you made a big mistake...

Ask them to assemble 6 randomly chosen DCC locos of different manufacturer/model as distributed power 3 - 1 - 2 with a long train and run it over the entire layout. Then run RP in the same train configuration. With as big a grin as you can muster ask them who made a mistake. 

[G8B4Life]

I just noted a new RailPro thread on MRR's website under 'electronics and DCC'.

And the moderator removed all the links to RPUG from the thread. How nice! Seriously their forum polices could use an update.

Having a read it reminded me of why I don't visit forums other than this one much, as usual someone asked for advice on the system and as usual the naysayers came out with their reasons against it. I was amazed though that someone actually could see beyond the shoreline and could see how some of RP would be a big benefit overseas but not surprised when "that feature's not needed here".

RailPro is a proprietary system and I would never invest any money into something that may not be here tomorrow.

That argument has to be the #1 fallacy in the model railroad world and is my greatest bugbear with DCC fanboys. You don't want propriety then don't buy DCC either, invent your own system and then give away all the specs and code to all and sundry to build it from scratch themselves.

Tell me how your going to buy a new DCS240 from NCE when yours goes down and DigiTrax went bust last year, or how your going to buy a new ProCab from DigiTrax because yours went down and NCE went bust last year, or how your going to access those manufacturer specific high CV's that your system cannot understand without using the manufacturers programmer.  DCC isn't propriety my rear end. 

- Tim

[hirailer]

My 02. cents worth.

"There is a principal which a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance.... that principal is contempt prior to investigation."

Herbert Spencer

It amazes me how someone can strongly criticize something they know nothing about and refuse to find out.

Mel