Upgrade your board gaming experience with beautiful miniature train sets!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Last time we'll bug you about the new Kickstarter. Promise.
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 10:35:14 AM
We're just following marketing advice, y'all
Kickstarter marketing gurus tell us that backers of old campaigns should be informed about new campaigns a few weeks before launch, the day before launch, and the day of launch once the campaign is funded.
That seems a bit spammy to us. I mean, if you were interested in the new campaign--you'd have signed up by now. Right?
Right?
Oh no. At least tell us you went to the grocery store like we asked. You know we're out of bread.
We just don't want to get yelled at by our marketing people. Hence this update.
Our sacrifice to the Kickstarter marketing gods now complete, feel free to cleanse your inbox.
Love you,
The Little Plastic Train Company
New Kickstarter campaign goes live tomorrow, October 10th, at 10AM central time
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Oct 09, 2023 at 12:42:56 PM
Our Extraordinary Engines and Remarkable Railcars campaign goes live tomorrow, October 10th, at 10AM central time
Why announce the specific time? Our custom graffiti pledge is limited to just 5 backers, so if you want to try to snag one of those slots, you'll probably need to act fast.
If you haven't already, you can sign up HERE to be notified via email the moment we launch.
See you tomorrow!
Well, not literally. We don't have access to your webcam. Even if we did, we really don't want to see all that. Trust us, we still have PTSD from a few pandemic work Zoom call "accidents."
The Little Plastic Train Company
New Kickstarter: Extraordinary Engines and Remarkable Railcars! Launching October 10th.
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 12:25:37 PM
Hello awesome backers,
It's been a long time coming, but we're finally proud to announce our upcoming Kickstarter for our new series of trains: Extraordinary Engines and Remarkable Railcars, launching on Tuesday, October 10th!
Our Extraordinary Engines set is a bundled set of three new engines:
The Odyssey (an orange Martian monorail)
The Sakura (a white/pink bullet train)
The Marquis (a purple late-19th century steam locomotive)
With Extraordinary Engines, you can now bring even more colors and train styles to your favorite train games!
As with our earlier Kickstarter, each train set will contain:
48 trains
A stackable score marker, and
Come in a tin with unique artwork by Julianne Griepp--the same artist who did all the art for our last campaign.
No AI generated artwork here!
Remarkable Railcars
Our Remarkable Railcars set is a bundled set of five new railcars designed to pair with the engines from our first Kickstarter:
Urban Freight (a black graffitied boxcar)
Almost Heaven Coal Co. (a green coal car)
The Vista Dome (a 1950s yellow observation car)
The Neptune (an early 20th century blue passenger car)
Upstate Farm Cattle Co. (a red cattle car)
Annoyed that you couldn't pair our engines with railcars? Well now you can!
As with our earlier Kickstarter, each train set will contain:
48 trains
A stackable score marker, and
Come in a tin with unique artwork by Julianne Griepp--the same artist who did all the art for our last campaign.
Did we mention we think using AI art sucks and takes money away from hardworking, deserving artists?
Custom Graffiti Pledge
We're also offering a custom graffiti pledge for backers who'd like their own graffiti design (or one designed by our artist) on some of the cars in each set of Urban Freight boxcars. This deluxe pledge is limited to five backers--so you'll need to be quick to grab it!
We've made samples of our Urban Freight boxcars, so you can see the quality of the print we've been able to achieve with these graffiti designs.
Free Start Player Coin for First 48 Hour Backers
As a thank you to all of our backers, we're also throwing in a free start player coin for everyone who backs in the first 48 hours.
These thick coins are 2 inches in diameter.
The obverse shows a race between a 19th century locomotive and the famous 20th Century Limited.
The reverse shows one of the first locomotives, Stephenson's Rocket, next to a Saturn V rocket.
Quick update re: future Kickstarter
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Jun 05, 2023 at 11:52:36 AM
Hey everyone,
We've gotten some messages asking what's going on with the next Kickstarter since our last post said we'd launch last month.
No need to worry. The new Kickstarter is coming, but it probably won't launch until September.
We'll remember, Maurice. We promise.
Why the delay?
A couple of reasons.
We weren't happy with the prototype train stations. After brainstorming ways to fix various issues to improve the functionality of the prototype stations, to make them look as nice as possible, and to keep costs reasonable, we decided in the end to scrap them. It wasn't an easy decision and took some time to make. Consequently, the new Kickstarter will only be for new train models and rolling freight.
A family member / health issue that one of our team members needed to take time off to deal with. (Everything's fine now.)
The U.S. debt limit crisis. The last thing we wanted to do was to launch a Kickstarter in the midst of a possible U.S. debt default so we had to wait until that resolved.
Finally, we don't want to launch a Kickstarter during the summer. Traditionally, summers are not a great time to launch because many people go on vacation and pay less attention to Kickstarters. There's also competition from summer board game conventions like Origins and GenCon.
So, we're ready to go but just waiting for the right time. We'll send out a pre-launch page once we've got a firm date.
In the meantime, we hope everyone has a great summer!
The Little Plastic Train Company
------
P.S. Oh, one more thing. We've been nominated for an Origins Award for best board game accessory. They have a jury, so don't ask if you can vote for us--you can't. Anyway, that's pretty neat!
It's a major award!
Teaser for our next Kickstarter
almost 2 years ago
– Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 03:29:55 PM
Hey y'a'll,
We've been hard at work on our next Kickstarter project--with a tentative launch date of early May.
We're not ready to make a full announcement just yet but we wanted to share a little bit 'cause we're too dang excited.
Based on the results from the last survey we decided to do...pretty much everything y'all asked for!
That means:
Five rolling freight cars to match our existing engines
Three engines in new colors (pink/white, orange, and purple),and
Deluxe train stations for Ticket to Ride: Europe.
All the new trains will come in the same fancy tins as before. (The stations won't since you'll be able to store them in the existing tins.)
In a past update, we teased a prototype of our cattle car.
Now, we'd like to show you some test samples of our graffiti box car!
We'll probably darken up the gray base in the final version.
Vandalism has never looked so good!
We plan for our graffiti boxcar set to have several different images in different colors.
We'llalso be offering a high-levelbacker pledge for your own graffiti design to be put in the set! Have a good idea(1) for a graffito(2) but are cursed with cacography(3)? We'll have our artist make your idea a not-poorly-drawn reality!
We're working on figuring out how many of these we can offer (it won't be many) and at what price point (it won't be cheap--custom molds and artist time are expensive).
We'll post our full new Kickstarter announcement, along with a signup page, in the next update.
