You must place an order for any of these products NOW if you want GUARANTEED DELIVERY.

Dear Rapido Customer

I hope all is well!

     A new shipment has arrived, including the first of our 2nd run steam generators, VIA's "Glen Fraser" lounge car, the Burlington Northern Executive cars, and more "Easy-Peasy" N scale lighting sets.  These are being shipped to you in the next day or two.

     With your shipment we've also included a backorder report and a sales sheet for those three new Super Continental Line passenger car styles we announced back in 2009 and had hoped to deliver last year.  The sheet is attached or can be downloaded from:

http://www.rapidotrains.com/salespacks/25-Feb-Deadline-Canada.pdf

     We had hoped to bring these out at the beginning of last year, but the recession took its toll on us.  Orders weren't high enough to justify our minimum order requirements in China (we can't make 1000 extra cars hoping they will sell, unfortunately), and we had to allocate scarce funds to the steam generators, cabooses and LRCs.

The CN Club Deluxe, "Green" Series Sleeper and "Lake" Series Buffet Parlour are the first all-new Super Continental Line cars since the baggage car came out in summer 2008.

     I have heard grumblings from dealers that you don't think we will ever bring out the stuff that we announce.  Please rest assured that we will bring out every new product that we tool up.  We can't afford not to!  Once we spend $50K - $100K or more on tooling we can't just abandon it.  But when orders are not high enough we have no choice but to delay production until they pick up.  That is why the LRC coaches took so long to arrive.  But when they did, everyone was delighted with them.

     So please be patient with us and continue to let your customers know about our forthcoming projects.

     I have also heard that some dealers are upset with the CP caboose price increase.  To give you an idea of how our costs have gone up in China, the LRC coaches cost us 60% more than we were originally quoted in 2008, and we could not increase the prices as we only found out about this when production began.  The CP caboose costs have gone up by over 35% since late 2009.  So we are living with smaller margins, but we can't absorb all of those price increases.  Orders for the new run of yellow CP cabooses so far are very strong - we've already presold almost half the total quantity of the first run - so obviously most modellers realize that even at $75 it is still good value for all the details and features.

    We will be ordering materials for production of the new Super Continental Line cars in the first week of March.  So if you need any additional "Green" sleepers or other cars please let me know by the end of the month.  Similarly, we're ordering materials for the ACR and CPR coaches at the same time so please get those orders in by the deadline.

   As always, please feel free to call if you have any questions or comments.

Thanks and regards,

Jason

Order Deadline February 25, 2011

Delivery Expected Fall 2011

 dgs