24th December, 2013 Brief Project Update & Christmas Greetings

24^th December – Brief Project Update & Christmas Greetings

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Homework

• The Southern Rail Office will be closed from Today 24^th December until Monday 13^th January, 2014

• Recently we have received several out of hours & weekend & abusive phone calls. Whilst we love talking to you we do need to draw the line as to what is acceptable & what is not acceptable including abusive phone calls.

• We don’t often get abusive phone calls and we will not tolerate them under any circumstance. You will be hung up on immediately this happens.

• A softly softly approach will always get our attention.

• Our hours of business are 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday. Calls outside of these hours or on weekends will not be accepted. We are the same as you – we want a life outside of work and our weekends are reserved for family & friends

• Some of you may have noticed that our Christmas promotion was taken off the web on Tuesday 10^th December due to a mistake in the pricing of the NPRY’s. We were able to put back up only a shortened version for a while due to some technical difficulties with the web site. A full corrected version was re posted on the 17^th. To our very supportive customers, thank you for your understanding & yes the price was too good to be true.

Project Updates

I will try to make this short & sweet.

Victorian/ SA Rail Tank Cars ( tank cars in general )

We apologies that we have not been able to get these to Australia before Christmas as was expected. There has been considerable work going on behind the scenes since arriving back from our visit to China in November.

The real reason for the delay is that all the tooling files to make the new round of tooling and adjust some of the first round tooling had been accidently lost. This caused havoc and a mad scramble for new drawings based on only our viewing files. There are nine versions in this round and 6 in the Ampol / Freight Australia / Atlantic and more with some unannounced versions + those for the QLD OLO/OVO’s.

At the same time, whilst most of the decoration files have been completed for some time there were 4 that we had second thoughts about. Our research indicate some different forms/colours of patches were used on these tanks but at the end of the day we did not think the public would be accepting of what we thought was correct & ended up making a commercial decision based on public expectations and changing them at the last minute. By The way the Graffiti versions look great.

In short everything is being done to complete & ship the SA / Victorian cars on 23^rd January before the start of Chinese New Year. Keep your fingers crossed or offer a little prey.

Ampol / Freight Australia / Atlantic Rail Tank Cars

This round will follow hot on the heels of the Victorian Wagons and should ship towards the end of Feb or early March. 60% of the artwork is complete and the rest will be corrected early in the New Year.

QLD OLO/OVO Rail Tank Wagons

The rail Tank Program is extensive as you can see. The Qld versions will follow on from the others & be in Stock in time for the Brisbane Exhibition in early May.

PRX / PRY –  NPRY / NPRF Cement Hoppers

Whist our first priority has been to put the Rail Tank Wagons back on ‘track’ the cement hoppers have not been overlooked. We expect to sign off on the final drawings in the next week or so and the tooling commenced & completed prior to CNY with a planned delivery in March.

Vlocities

The Vlocities are coming along nicely although it appears that we have misunderstood the factories scheduling. According to the factory we should see the tooling samples for Hobson’s Bay with shipping of production in July in time for Caulfield. Not happy Jan but that’s the way it is. Our mistake.

2300/DFZ class

Again delivery has not met our expectations although work continues on what has turned out to be a little more complicated project than what we first thought. Before going to China we completely had a re look at the project and felt that the anticipated production size was excessive.

Bearing in mind that this loco will be made in two gauges & after adding in the Arizon versions some numbers will have a quantity of 35 only. Some are close to being sold out already so don’t miss out. Take advantage of the Christmas / New Year’s promotion and get your order placed now.

The scheduling is now to have tooling samples or test shots available for the Brisbane May Exhibition with production being shipped in August or September2014

There are plenty of other surprises in store & we will keep you up to date as more info comes to hand or we are in a position to make an announcement.

In the meantime we would like to thank all of our customers for a fabulous year and your continued support. We wish you and your families a very happy Christmas and the best of New Years in 2014.

Rocket