New scenery supplier

[cteno4]

Hey was just at the hobby shop (hobby works small chain) here to pick up some paint and low and behold they had a huge (like 7' tall!) new turing rack of scenery materials from a company called JTT (http://www.jttmicroscale.com/). i remember seeing them a year or two ago online with some trees. they look to be coming from the architectural modeling area with cars, street lights, etc at 1/4", 1/8", 1/16" and 1/32" to 1' scales. they have a pretty good selection of ground foams in a medium volume at $4 so better than having to buy a larger tub of woodland scenics at more like $8-10. the cool thing they had was a box of 100 wire branches with foliage. each has 3-4 branches from twisted wire that is coated nicely to look like bark and then with some foam foliage on it. for 8 cents each they make great smaller trees to fill in a small new growth area. you could easily roll your own, but again at $8 it would be hard to beat all that time it would take to make 100 of these!

 

they also have some really high quality trees as well in z, n, ho and o. i was in a hurry and didnt look too closely at those boxes. more like a couple of bucks a tree for these.

 

nice to have a competitor for ws!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Hobby Dreamer]

Thanks Jeff,

 

There are some PDF catalogs and price sheets:

http://www.jttmicroscale.com/catalog.asp

 

-these can help decide scale, tree type etc..

 

 

Cheers

Rick

[cteno4]

interesting Hobby Search just picked up JTT scenery materials! maybe some more aggressive marketing going on now!

 

the JTT carousel in our LHS is really huge, like over 7' tall, it grabs your eye a lot more than the whole row of ws stuff there!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[CaptOblivious]

Just returned from my LHS, and they had not one, but three ginormous JTT racks up, reducing the number of WS racks from three to two in the process. The stuff looks good, and offers a nice range from cheap-and-ready to pricey-and-good-looking. Will probably pick up some of their stuff next time I need foliage, and try it out. I notice the products read "Imported by MRC", but imported from who? Not a brand I'd ever heard of before.

[cteno4]

those racks are enormous and dominate most LHS landscapes! I think they have a new marketing director thats getting aggressive for them in marketing!

 

appears the main company is part of a group of architects and model builders in the LA area (garden grove). from their web site:

 

"JTT & PARTNERS was established in June 2000 by John Truong. We're a full service firm serving the architectural and model making industry. Our services consist of Architectural services, Modeling service, and Model supplies.

 

JTT & PARTNERS is a young and energetic group of Architects, Landscape Architects, and Professional Model Builder who graduated from Grad School of Architecture at UCLA and Cal Poly Pomona. With multi-disciplinary minds, we come together to provide professional services.

 

JTTmicroscale is our manufacturing department. We manufacture over 800 items on scenery products and model parts such as: Miniature Tree, Armature, Turf & Ground Foam, Gravel & Ballast, Skylights, Basswood, Human Figure, Automobile, Street Furniture... for Model Railroading, Architectural Model, and Movie Scenic. We also custom made your orders on Miniature Trees.

 

JTTtree is the world finest miniature tree for model making industries."

 

MRC is the main distributor for the US and they have sub distributors and dealers listed on their web site.

 

hey get $5000 discount right now if you buy a container full! planning a large layout???

 

cheers

 

jeff

[inobu]

I looked at the prices and thought wow, you could get a lot of real estate covered and for cheap. Then reality cleared his throat and reminded me that cheap is cheap and it is cheap for a reason. More often than not "cheap" comes with a hidden charge. Health and safety factors or the lack of. The main question, What is this stuff made of?

 

I'm sick and tired of two things. Broken item with the made in China logo and contamination headlines with a trail that leads back to "made in China".

 

The last thing I want to hear is "Honey, what have you been breathing? your nostrils are green or "the headache I get being around you is somehow different now."

 

In any case we need to be really careful nowadays.

 

Inobu 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

[cteno4]

Inobu,

 

i grabbed a few things at the hobby shop a few weeks back and all looked to be the same materials as ws and others. no foul smells (ie urea, formaldehyde, etc). these are really not a heck of a lot cheaper than other sources. the only thing cheap was the small tree branches which can be used to make small n scale trees and i think these are cheap as they have probably mechanized the production of these little twisted wire, flocked limbs/trees.

 

the big advantage is that they have some of the ground foams come in smaller packages than ws stuff so you can get more the amounts you really need of the odder stuff.

 

my suspicion is that the ws and scenic express probably come from china as well.

 

all that being said you are right that we all need to be careful and watch what we get these days. i got a sheet of luan 3/16" and had it cut into 4 pieces to bring home. had it in the car for 30 sec and was overpowered by formaldehyde! the glue and wood were saturated with it. im a biologist by training and have been around a lot of formaldehyde and was never a problem, but this was so strong with windows all down on the freeway that my eyes are watering! calls and letters to home despot provided no response...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[inobu]

Yep,

 

It is all about awareness.

 

Inobu 

[KenS]

Well, I agree with Inobu that we need to be cautious about what's really in things these days.  That said, unless you live as a hermit or send everything you buy to a testing lab, there's not a whole lot of caution you can apply directly.  Most of the time you have to trust other people to be cautious for you, or to have done as they said they would. And in a global economy, its very hard to avoid all potential problems. The origin of the object is not the origin of its components, or of the raw materials that went into those components.

 

It's not like every product made in China is bad either, it's just that so many products are made there that any failure of the regulatory system or the product design is likely to have far-reaching effects, and be widely reported. It is a rapidly-growing economy, so there will be such failures. But I own plenty of solid, well-made, articles that came out of a Chinese factory (Kato trains, for one). There is a risk that some product won't be up to the same standard as something produced in a highly-regulated country (to the extent that there's much of anything left being produced in those places). Brand names are one safety net against that risk, as you have a supposedly-concerned intermediary.

 

Part of what you pay extra for in a brand name is the assumption that the company wants to preserve its brand, by ensuring that its products, even if manufactured elsewhere, meet its idea of quality.  As we've seen in repeated news stories in the past couple of years about tainted construction material and lead paint on children's toys, sometimes things that shouldn't be present don't get caught by anyone (brand owner, customs, regulatory agency, distributor) until harm is done, and the owner of the brand is as much a victim as anyone else.  That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't partially at fault, but it does reduce the value of a brand, any brand, as a symbol of quality.  And, of course, there are "brands" that simply mean "cheapest possible" and don't provide much value (anybody ever own a Gateway computer? Ouch!).

 

I think there's still some value to brand-name products, and it doesn't matter is the brand is domestic or not, provided the owner of the brand cares about its value.  That's clearly more likely in a large brand. But even Sony had big problems with defective batteries produced by a downstream provider a few years ago. The bottom line is that even a brand only mitigates some risk; it's no guarantee.

 

Woodland Scenics is a large brand (they don't just do model railroad supplies; I've seen them in crafts stores marketing similar materials for use in school diorama and science projects).  But many brands in the model railroad industry aren't all that big, and still represent quality.

 

So I don't think you should avoid something just because of its origin (even the branded stuff may well be made or contain components from other countries, regardless of what it says on the label) or because the brand is new (JTT may well care enough to exercise as much oversight as WS does).

 

It certainly pays to know the strengths and weaknesses of name brands, and perhaps to be cautious with the first couple of purchases from a new company or a new "unbranded" substance.  And if you're buying something for a use where quality really matters (children's toys or craft supplies, food-preparation surfaces, mountaineering ropes) a bit of paranoia isn't amiss.  But for model railroad scenic supplies, I wouldn't hesitate to try out a new supplier, although I might wear gloves while using their materials (but then I'm likely to do that anyway).

 

JTT sounds interesting, and even if perhaps there were lead paint on their trees (the "worst case" I can think of with regard to a scenic supply), I'm not planning to eat them, or even handle them much.  And, realistically, WS could just as easily have the same problem; I doubt they test the paint on the things they have made overseas, they probably just trust the manufacturer to make them according to specification.

[cteno4]

Actually now that i think about it if they are selling in California they may need to provide some certifications for their ingredient safety. i remember them having more regulations than a lot of the rest of the us on this on more 'normal' products. im guessing that JTT cares some as they do modeling themselves and presumably use their own products and care about their own safety some.

 

I see no reason to question JTT over Woodland scenics or Scenic Express, as they are well known, but i have no reason to believe they care as any more or any less or use chinese manufacturing or not.

 

JTT has been around for a while selling product as folks responded on other lists they have been around in California stores for a few years now, just seem to be branching out to a larger market.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Hobbysearch just picked up some JTT items. they seem to be on a marketing tear, now getting into japan!

 

jeff

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/search_e.asp?Typ1_c=104&scope=1&urikire=1&andor=0&scope2=0&sortID=0&SFlt_f=0&SFilter=Manufacturer&ItKey=JTT

[Kamiyacho]

I've used a few JTT trees, as in the foreground of this picture in front of the locomotive.  To me the quality is a bit variable - I spent a lot of time looking over the boxes before I bought one.

[cteno4]

they do have a variety of price/quality as well. so far i have only popped for the cheap tree branches to use as small, juvi trees and scenic material which they have in a good quantity for a $3 price tag that is reasonable and bit different from some of the other SE and WS materials i have. do figure eventually i may get lazy and buy some of the nice premade trees if i want some in a front row seat!

 

btw was just at our LHS hobby works and they cut back to just a single giant stand (they started with two) and some has moved to standard shelf space. the WS area got collapsed a lot when the JTT stuff came in. also was at MB Kleins (modeltrainstuff.com) the other week and they had most of the JTT stuff as well.

 

cheers

 

jeff