Don,
I don't have much faith in Wikipedia - seen too many errors on there. Athearn may have finally moved everything overseas, but last I heard from anyone I would trust, blue box kits where still made here.
Very nice display. I am the direct oposite. I don't collect at all. I can count on one hand all the rolling stock I own that does not fit the theme of my layout.
Mike Wolf has seriously misjudged the HO market, even with the increase in RTR and collector interests in HO, he is ignoring large segments that spend lots of money. And, it has been my experiance working in the hobby field, that collectors buy with the economic cycle, but modelers spend more consistantly regardless of the stock market or other ups and downs. This makes them a better "base" for any industry. Cater to them first, pick up collectors if you can.
DCC has only made a 30%-40% penitration and has leveled off in growth. True, most new comers in the future will go DCC, but most with existing layouts/equipment who will switch, have already done so. That leaves a lot DC operators out there still likely to buy locomotives. Those MTH locos that only go 25 smph at 12 volts will not be purchased by those guys. And, Mikes locos work on DCC, but you need DCS to get all the features - not good.
Most HO layouts are not just running diaplays, but are designed for some sort of simulated operation in prototype fashion. Needing multiple control systems, or not having compatiblity, is simply not acceptable.
Sound, smoke, talking conductors, etc, etc. is also of questionable appeal in HO. While many do like sound, there are many who do not like it the smaller scales or who are indifferent. This too is a area Mike does not understand. If he offered his locos in a 12 volt DC, non sound version, I may have some interest when he finaly comes out with something that has not already been done 50 times or that was not a failure in real life (read triplex), but since I have NO intention of buying DCS or DCC, I will pass on MTH. Athearn, Bachmann, Bowser, Walthers, Intermountain, BLI/PCM, and Atlas are all interested in selling models to DC operators - they will get my business.
I know some collectors, and I know lots of HO modelers with large layouts. Larger trains do not have any special ablity to prompt big boys to part with money compaired to little trains. Each little train may sometimes (only sometimes mind you) cost less, but we often buy and actually run lots and lots of them and buy lots of freight and passenger cars to pull behind them. On many of the layouts I operate on, we often run 40, 50 and even 70 cars trains. I can't say ever seen that in O gauge or Large Scale.
That is likely a big difference between the smaller and larger scales. in the smaller scales we buy much larger fleets of rolling stock in relation to the number of locos we have. Have to 50 hoppers for that coal train with two mallet's on the head end!
Sheldon
Sheldon,
I agree with 99% of what you said. No question that "HO" is the most popular Model Train gauge. A large % of the "HO" market is in kits as well as pre-built, true hobbyists. Last year I assembled several Mantua Kits from the 1940s.
The Wikipedia on-line encyclopedia under Arthearn ??:
"In mid-2009, all remaining US production was moved to China and warehousing moved to parent Horizon Hobby. Sales and product development was relocated to a smaller facility in Long Beach, CA."
MTH Electric Trains:
When MTH sued Lionel and won, they got a lot of "HO" tooling from Lionel's builder, Korea Brass. The new locomotive have sound, smoke, and both MTH's PS-3 digital control and the fully compatible NMRA standard DCC control installed.
I am primarily a Collector of old "O" gauge and an Operator of "G" gauge.
Don U. TCA 73-5735
DMUinCTAthearn was founded in 1938 by Irvin Athearn, it was sold to Horizon Hobby in 2004. Horizon Hobby is an employee-owned international company operating in "more than 50 countries". Making all types of hobby related products, they, being a Private Held, do not report sales volume. All production was moved overseas in 2009.
All production was NOT moved overseas in 2009, blue box kits and many of the parts assembled in China are still made at the California plant. Being privately held, we have no idea if they are bigger or smaller than Lionel or MTH.
BUT, even at the lower average price, and even taking into account the increased interest in O gauge through the last decade, HO & N scale modelers still out number all the others scales by at least 5 to 1 based on every industry/magazine survey done in recent times.
AND, while HO may cost less per item, its smaller size allows much more of it to be "installed" on a layout of a given area. This makes the expendature per square foot of layout similar if not higher in HO or N scale.
AND, as a group, a larger precentage of HO or N scale modelers are just that, modelers, buying not only locos, rolling stock and track, but also large quantities of structures, scenery materials, accessories, etc., as opposed to the large segment of the O gauge market who have barely even removed their trains from the box let alone built a layout.
I will use myself personally as an example: I am building an HO layout that fills an 800 sq ft room with two seperate scenic decks, has a 500' double track main line, over 100 turnouts, 8 radio throttles, full signaling and detection, and will require 20-25 staged trains. Each train will require 3-4 powered diesels or 1-2 large steam locos, for a total loco roster of over 100 powered units. Most of which I have. My loco fleet alone represents aproximately $15K. Track and turnouts another $5K or more. 600 freight cars at an average cost of $15 is another $9K, Eight Aristo Train Engineers and power supplies totaling $1600, etc, etc.
And I know at least two dozen HO or N scale modelers with more/bigger layouts than me within a half hour drive. Many with large investments in DCC and sound making their costs much higher than mine.
Again, without those privately held sales numbers from Athearn, Walthers, Bachmann, Atlas, etc, your claim is totaly unfounded. Wikipedia?, come on now. I don't doubt that MTH might be doing $60M, but we have no way of knowing that Athearn or Walthers is not doing $60M or more.
I don't know how industry sales figures break down by scale, but I'm not the one making wild claims about who is biggest.
I have been involved with model trains of all scales since 1967, have worked in the industry, and have seen/heard nothing that would support your claim about Lionel or MTH.
And every piece of MTH I have ever seen said "Made in (somewhere other than the USA)", I don't care where they design it. Many of the HO manufacturers do their own design work as well.
And one final note, I do hope Mike has lots of money because he is bound to loose some of it in his HO venture. Over 60% of HO modelers still run DC, 12 VOLTS DC, not the 18 volts it takes to make his stuff run on DC. So he is seriously limiting his market. All the other HO companies learned real fast that DCC was not going to take over for a long time, they all backed away from DCC only marketing in one way or another. MTH pushes a system all their own, in a market much more diverse than the O gauge market. Not likely to succeed. HO modelers will not align themselves with just one brand, they want full compatiblity. Of all the HO modelers I know personally, MTH has not sold a loco yet.
ATLANTIC CENTRAL DMUinCTKeep in mind that MTH is the second largest toy train company, behind Lionel, in the United States. They make their money in "O Gauge" while "G" and "HO" were only entered by them about 6 years ago. Lionel and MTH are larger than Walthers or Athearn? By what measure? Facts please. I suspect the only thing larger is the size of each train. Sheldon
DMUinCTKeep in mind that MTH is the second largest toy train company, behind Lionel, in the United States. They make their money in "O Gauge" while "G" and "HO" were only entered by them about 6 years ago.
Lionel and MTH are larger than Walthers or Athearn? By what measure? Facts please.
I suspect the only thing larger is the size of each train.
Keep in mind, "O" gauge is bigger and more expensive. Lionel Sets start at about $200 and run up to $2500 for a full scale/detailed set. Locomotives start about $70 and run to $1500.
(checking the company Web Pages and Wikipedia.org)
Athearn was founded in 1938 by Irvin Athearn, it was sold to Horizon Hobby in 2004. Horizon Hobby is an employee-owned international company operating in "more than 50 countries". Making all types of hobby related products, they, being a Private Held, do not report sales volume. All production was moved overseas in 2009.
Walthers, also a Private Held, was founded in 1932 by Bill Walthers."We provide information on over 200,000 different items for your trains from over 300 manufacturers -- and supply them to thousands of hobby shops around the globe!".
Lionel was founded by Joshua Lionel Cowen in 1900. From that begining, 109 years ago in New York, Lionel has sold more than 50 million trains, more trains than all of Lionel's competitors combined. Operating as Lionel Manufacturing (1900-1916), Lionel Corporation (1916-1969), Lionel MPC, a div. of General Mills (1970-1985), sold to Dick Kughn a Train Collector from Detroit it became Lionel Trains Inc. (1985-1995), then under Wellspring Capital Management (1995-Present) Lionel LLC. Lionel was forced into a brief banckrupcy protection as a result of a lawsuit against them by MTH involving theft of designs. MTH won, now Lionel and MTH are cooperating to build the hobby. "O" gauge trains designed in the USA and built in China, 2006 sales were $62,000,000
MTH Electric Trains (Mikes Train House MTH-Railking), founded by Mike Woff in1983 as a Lionel Dealer. He also had bought the Standard Gauge tooling from Williams Electric Trains and put it into production. MTH is based in Columbia Maryland. MTH entered the "O" gauge market in 1993 with MTH designed, Korean built products. They grew to pass Lionel in sales in 1998. Lawsuits by MTH against Lionel (twice), trading lawsuits with QSI, and being sued by the Union Pacific Railroad (it ended in MTH (and all other model train manufacturers getting a license to make UP trains without a fee), this drained there resources. An (estimated by news sorces) $12 settlement to MTH from Lionel helped to bring them back and being a solid second in the "O" gauge market. A Private Held company, after disclosers in the lawsuits, claimed sales in 2004 dropped to $30,000,000 but it is now estimated to be closer to $60,000,000.
The problem with the rail wipe is it drops down into a space (gap) Aristo Craft designed into the frog of the switches. I wrote to Aristo about the problem as suggested in a different forum here. The wiper then get caught between the two rails and shorts the supply.
All of my Aristo engines have rail wipes. They are designed differently. They also short between frog rails.
I received a new shipment of Aristo's wheel brushes. I will remove all the wipers from my MTH engines.
I lubracated the gear boxs before running all my MTH engines as instructed. But it is a guess-t-mate how much gets inside.
Not directing this at you....so nuthin personal...but I'm real proud of um. Often times biggest ain't the best. Besides, I've almost just decided to stay DC and go with good old fashioned blocks. I know there are more modern methods, but for me, that's probably all I'll need.
GearDrivenSteam Thanks for this. I am sorry for your trouble, but at least now I know to stay clear of MTH. Was looking at the DCS control system. No longer.
Thanks for this. I am sorry for your trouble, but at least now I know to stay clear of MTH. Was looking at the DCS control system. No longer.
Keep in mind that MTH is the second largest toy train company, behind Lionel, in the United States. They make their money in "O Gauge" while "G" and "HO" were only entered by them about 6 years ago. The DCS/PS2, a 3 rail AC track control system, was also designed to allow operation on 2 rail DC, as is used in "HO" and "G" gauge. The system is also compatible with the Lionel TMCC system. Yes, your MTH "G" trains can run on ether a DC or AC power supply. Many many thousands of "O Gauge" trains are running on DCS/ PS2 control across America. The new DCS/PS3 system, already released for "HO Gauge", has both the MTH DCS and a NMRA standard DCC decoder built in.
"All of the sudden one went to max speed" That can happen, the PS2/DCS system encodes the motor RPM and the microprocessor converts it to speed. It's encoded by putting a "band" on the flywheel with alternating white and black stripes. The flywheel passes a sensor that reads the reflected light from the white as a "one" and no reflection from the black as an "zero". Most likely one of the three fine wires from the sensor is off or broken or an impact has opened up the tight gap on between the flywheel and sensor.
Grinding noise? MTH, like Lionel and American Flyer, use metal gearing, Steel Worm on a Bronze Gear. Turn off the smoke unit, I've had problems with the smoke unit fan.
MTH, LGB, and USA all use Pick Up Sliders, I paint the top and side of the sliders flat black. I have had slider problems with some USA and Early Aristo-Craft switches. The newer Aristo-Craft switches replaced the brass "guide rails" with plastic, fixed the problem. I have converted 5 Aristo-Craft locomotives to MTH/DCS control, Aristo uses all wheel axle pickup, no traction tires, works great. On the other hand, why would MTH put driver pickups on drivers with Traction Tires????
I have had good luck with MTH for problems and parts. At the twice a year TCA York meet you get to talk with Mike Wolf, Andy Edleman, Rich Foster, and the service technicians. They also have a parts department at TCA York.
Try contacting Andy by E-Mail, remind him again of your talk at your show.
Try AndyE@MTH-Railking.com
Also, Midge Wilburn has been helpful in the past Midge@MTH-Railking.com
Sounds like you are a victim of poor Quality Control and improper product testing to rush the product to market. You might consider copy and paste this post to other forums, then include links to these pages in your next email to them. I've not had any kind of problem from any of their products. Then again, what I buy, from any vendor, is stuff that has been around for a while IOW, give them time to work out the bugs that are inherent with any new product.
I know it is a real pain in the "tail feathers" to buy the latest and gratest, only to find that it will not perform as advertised and expected.
Tom Trigg
Three weeks ago I met Andy Edleman Vice-President Marketing MTH at Railroad Festival at Owosso MI.
I talked to him about my 2 GG-1s that failed.
He asked if I went to MTH's Customer support page on MTH's web site.
I told him I filled out the request for service help form about one month ago.
He asked what happened to the GG-1s.
I told him in detail.
I was running the engines as a lash-up with MTH's TIU.
All of a sudden one went to max speed. When ever power was applied. The engine went to max speed.
After I removed itfrom the tracks. I was running the other engine.
When I turned off the engine sound to hear TV. I heard a bad grinding noise.
I told him I brought the engines to the fest in an attempt to get MTH to fix the engines.
He said he would not except the engines.
NOW MTH GG-1 were just shipped for sale.
I also told him that the engines were returned to MTH immediately after I received them for problems.
Andy Edleman handed me his card. He requested I fill out the on-line forms again and mention that I talked to him about getting service.
That night back in Motel 6 on Denny's WIFI. I filled out MTH's on-line forms again.
Well it has been three weeks to the day and I received no reply.
I also mentioned that the rail wipes on their engines are major problems.
I explained that the wipes short across the frog rails on Aristo Craft switches and short out.
The shorting blew out the power transistors on the #2 power output.
I also reported that on-line.
NO response from MTH.
I told Andy that I removed the rail wipes and added several wheel brushes. The engine functions great.
Andy told me that their first test engine did not pick up the control signals with just "one" wheel wipe.
They added the rail wipes. Never retested, never with multi wheel brushes.
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