I was just looking at Lionel's shipping schedule and noticed that the 2 K-Line Pacific steamers in the latest catalog have been dropped from production. Just as well. At approx. $250 a pop, they would have been grossly overpriced. I just bought one in Christmas colors for $59.95.
Jim
Modeling the Baltimore waterfront in HO scale
There may be a problem with the company that was holding K-Line merchandise(Sanda Kan) from overseas, could be legal problems like licensing or financial agreements.
I have not seen Lionel selling any of K-Line's products here in Florida. If there is any of K-Line's stuff on the shelves it is from K-Line before the Lionel buy-out. Maybe Lionel is too busy with the lawsuit with MTH!
Lee F.
I don't know what disappointed me more, the ridiculous prices or the ridiculous paint jobs.
K-Line's Pacific is a great looking toy locomotive. It has a backup light in the rear of the tender. It's a great size, too. Too bad Lionel chose not to offer this engine. I see that the K-Line by Lionel caboose is still scheduled.
Thr reason I was on the Lionel site was to look up the ship date of James the Red Engine. According to the schedule, it shipped this month. Maybe it will be ready as a Christmas present after all.
A bunch of the K-Line/Lionel products were cancelled several months ago. Ususal reason for this is lack of sufficient preorders. The MP-15 was cancelled as well as the steam engine and I can't recall what else. The "K-Line by Lionel" paint schemes on those items were a joke and I'd be surprised if any of them ended up being made at all. Not to mention the almost expect price increases.
One of K-Line's beig plusses from square one was their affordability as compared to Lionel products. That is why when I first re-entered the hobby, my K-Line purchases outnumbered Lionel something like 10-1 (I did a count at one time some years ago). Even as K-Line products became more scale, they still were priced better than many similar products.
Lionel will have a hard time maintaining that price advantage given their history. And that price advantage is what did get many of us to look at K-Line products in the first place.
brianel, Agent 027
"Praise the Lord. I may not have everything I desire, but the Lord has come through for what I need."
"Lionel will have a hard time maintaining that price advantage given their history. And that price advantage is what did get many of us to look at K-Line products in the first place."
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And that's the main reason we can most likely expect to see Lionel rather quickly drop the K-Line brand from their line, despite earlier assurances to the contrary.
To be sure, Lionel does produce a few items that are as attractively priced as similar items offered by competitors, but those items are indeed few and far between (at least in my opinion). Often enough, when you buy Lionel, you're paying a premium for the brand name. I no longer (if I ever did) buy trains based solely on brand, and prefer to buy models I like, at prices I can live with, regardless of who makes them. If I was collecting Lionel trains (or MTH, or Atlas, or K-Line, or whatever), I might see things differently. But since I buy these things to play with, I couldn't care less about the colors on the boxes.
Does anybody know the status of K-Line accessories? After visting several hobby shops in the East and around Ohio, I still see many K-Line accessories. I first thought they were just empting the warehouse, but the more of them I see, I am doubting my intial reaction.
Celebrating 18 years on the CTT Forum.
Buckeye Riveter......... OTTS Charter Member, a Roseyville Raider and a member of the CTT Forum since 2004..
Jelloway Creek, OH - ELV 1,100 - Home of the Baltimore, Ohio & Wabash RR
TCA 09-64284
Brianel,
I'm afraid that the price that got many of us(myself included) to take a look at K-line was what ultimately put them out of business.
One of my favorite K-line pieces is my Lackawanna Trainmaster. I opted for the TMCC version, which sold for $225. One could get a basic version with just an E-unit for $100, which is an incredible price by any stretch of the imagination.
The problem is they invested the tooling in this great engine, but then weren't making enough profit on it to pay for the cost of the tooling. They did this time and time again with other great pieces like their Scale Hudson that had the whole O gauge world talking.
Of course, considering that the basic K-line steamer dates back to the Marx days, there shouldn't be any tooling costs to have to pay off.
Well Ben, let me make a comparison. I once worked in small music theatre, which took chances and booked some big names. For a small 1,000 seat venue this is a risky deal. The promoter, booking agents and the artists all get paid no matter what. So the theatre HAS TO have a total sellout to make it work. And many big names did sell out in no time flat. And others didn't though they came close. But money was lost on those shows because the margins were so tight.
That is kind of what happened with K-Line. It wasn't that there prices were so low, but that with all the new tooling and development expenses, they needed to have sell outs, not blow outs.
K-Line introduced some trend setting products (heavyweight passenger cars, spine TTUX cars, die cast hoppers with opening hatches, etc.). But as others have also observed, they put out too many too fast. And some of them weren't well thought through. Their Hudson was a fine steamer, and I think one of the train mags called it the best one ever. But the market did not need yet one more Hudson, and K-Line had a lot of money invested in that loco that might have been introduced as much for pride and ego as for actual perceived market demand.
Remember many of those really nice scale K-Line steamers ended up as blow outs rather quickly.
The Trainmaster you mentioned was one of the KCC exclusives. Now the KCC was a brilliant piece of marketing early on. Since K-Line couldn't afford advertising outside of the train mags, this was a great way to entice people to consider K-Line products and it worked well up to the MP-15 KCC offer for $45. The MP-15 was from new tooling, but it had been out for a while and had a chance to make some money. And K-Line certainly didn't have the monetary investment into the MP-15 as they did with later new products.
After that point, they started offering new products from new tooling in the KCC at rock bottom prices, like the Trainmaster and the A5 steam switcher.... and there was a huge brew-ha-ha over the A5 that something about it wasn't prototypical... I don't remember what it was. But at $139 the criticism was unjustified. K-Line was leading their customers to expect more than they could realistically deliver, and that's bad for business.
I feel this trend of the KCC backfired on K-Line big time, because although it got people to buy the products, it also contributed to consumers expecting totally new, scale detailed top level products at bargain basement prices. And that's a foolish path to walk down when you have all the added expenses of bringing those products to market.
It wasn't that K-Line changed direction away from their early more traditional trains, but that they started to offer too many new products too quickly. And too make the matter worse, they introduced some of those products through the KCC at rock bottom prices, which consumers began to expect for everything.
Of course, my reference to people considering K-Line products was for pre-1997 items, which the majority of were from already established tooling. I heard it direct (and it came to me as no surprise) that K-Line made more profits from the tradtionally sized box cars for example, than on the newer ones which had the added expense of new tooling.
PS: K-Line actually did put some investment dollars into the reburbishing of the dies and tools for the MARX steamer. Later issues of this loco are far superior in casting sharpness and detail compared to the early issues of the same steamer.
In case anyone is looking for a good deal on the previously mentioned K-Line 4-6-2 steamer, try JusTrains. They have the NYC with whistle for $95, PRR with Lionel RailSounds for $125. The PRR engine, by the way, is painted Brunswick green (almost black).
Richard Bjorkman
Ole Timer wrote: I don't know how much of K-Line Lionel is selling .... seems all they're doing is changing the name on some .... but they must be using their designers and tooling ! The detailed engines skyrocketed in looks once they bought them . You have to admit Lionel designers sucked on detail until then ... especially their steam engines . That 2-6-6-6 is the exact same engine as the k-line and the lionmaster line surelly was'nt designed by lionel designers ! The only other alternative are the MTH units but most protosound sound systems are burning up or don't function correctly . And that dumb expensive battery idea is 20 years old ! Remember the old lionels with the bottom mounted battery ?
Most problems that I have heard of with the MTH DCS system are user problems, mainly not reading the instruction manual and putting the tether in upside down.
Locally there are so many prblems with the CW-80 transformer that the local hobby shop has the CW-80 on back order for replacements. Personally I have had more trouble with current production Lionel, example the 6-23011 O gauge switch()a total lemon in my opion. To me Lionel is only a name any more
What I mean to say is that I don't like the current Lionel production items from about the last 12 to 15 years, seems like the quality is not there to me or you have to spend over $600.00 on an engine to get any pulling power from one. Purchased a Lionel Illinios Central GP-7 and it could barely pull four Lehigh Valley #6436 quad hoppers unloaded, had to unload it on ebay. So it is not just one new item that is making me anti Lionel.
Have several post war items that work great, the ZW transformers from the 60's are real good, and have a couple of 224 staem locomotives that still work great.
Far as Lionel making new K-Line items I have not seen any in the stores. One I would like to see Lionel make is the Super Streets by K-Line.
RIP Chewy - best dog I ever had.
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