India .. new experience. They wish to compete w/ China .. and tell me that they can give me MUCH better quality control, at a better price. The Chassie is the cheapest part of the production. Your posts re: engines, were one of my quotes and responses that got lost .. sigh, but we DID listen and are checking out 12,000 rpm motors for 100 and 500 lot pricing and we have pretty much decided on delryn gears.
Well, let history be an example. The Chinese factories have been having quality control issues lately (they've also been doing things like substituting materials to save money without notifying the contract holder). MTH went to Thailand to have their Protosound boards made, and those were very flaky.
In my experience working in the field of IT, all of the IT jobs outsourced to India come back to the states. Why? Over the phone, the Indians claim that they can do everything. Once they get off the phone, they ask each other what they should do, then do a sub-par job which then ends up being fixed here in the states. I'm not saying all of India's industries are like that, but it may be a reason why there isn't large scale manufacturing there compared to China.
As for the drive linkages, going standard is key. These days, ALL modern HO manufacturers use some variation of the T-Ball joint shaft. It's a shaft with a T on the end, and a ball on the body of the T that snaps into a socket and the "fingers" of the T turn the socket as transmission from the motor.
The old style universal U-joints have been "retired" as old technology.
The T-Ball joint is used by ALL manufacturers. Atlas, Bachmann, and Walthers use the double ended T-Ball with sockets on both the flywheel and the gear tower.
Athearn and Kato use a variation of the T-Ball joint in which the flywheel end is keyed for the hex end of the shaft, but the other end of the shaft that goes into the gear tower is still the T-Ball joint.
And yes, even brass (this is an Overland model) uses the T-Ball joint. Look at the right side of this photo
(shown in the photo is the NWSL regearing kit but if you look at the old shaft, there's a blue socket for the T-Ball joint)
Also, as a brass manufacturer, being true to detail is key. The older brass models had details that weren't quite correct. For example, some diesel models had stanchions that had an L shape mount so that they were mounted to the pilot instead of the deck like the prototype. Some people don't mind, but some others like me, absolutely hate it. So, I'd suggest that you do the research into which details go where and be true to the prototype. If necessary and possible, call up a few railroads and see if they will let you onto their property to take measurements. Getting ahold of the blueprints may help as well.
Ditch lights. Modern diesels have ditch lights. Most manufacturers don't put them in due to tooling costs, but with brass models, it's a pain to drill out the brass to put in lighted ditch lights. It's also a good idea to have a complete lighting package on the model.
Other details such as fans and grills should be etched metal and see-thru. Older brass models didn't have them and thats why I don't buy them. See-through fans and grills are standard on plastic models (not the low end ones though) today so people would expect a brass model to have the same.
Another suggestion for diesels is the GP38-2. Yes, the plastic market is saturated with them, but no one makes a decent one. There may be a market for a correct GP38-2. In plastic, Athearn, Walthers Proto, and Atlas all make the GP38-2. The Athearn uses stone-age tooling with no see-thru fans and uses a single light bulb, the Walthers Proto is incorrect dimensionally, and has an odd gear ratio, and the Atlas is in their Trainman line which is meant for trainsets and it also has dimensional inaccuracies.
The GP38-2 was a popular locomotive model (the prototype, not the scale model) so you would have very many roadnames to choose from.
