Login
or
Register
Subscriber & Member Login
Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!
Login
Register
Home
»
Model Railroader
»
Forums
»
General Discussion (Model Railroader)
»
Things that make you go hhhmmmm.
Edit post
Edit your reply below.
Post Body
Enter your post below.
My dad got me started in the hobby at the tender age of 4 years old. I have been a devoted participant ever since. I remember the $3.00 40 foot Box cars and the $29.00 SD40-2s. I am now 21 years old. The 40 Foot Box Cars were $7.50 (Before Horizon), And the SD40-2s were gone, having been discontinued when Athearn retooled them a few years back. The new ones they came out with Listed for $55.00. All in all I thought those were pretty reasonable. But in my part of the country. (Wyoming)Where the local hobby store is litterally a stall out of one guys garage and the closest retail establishment is 150 Miles away, the mail order outlet and e-bay are really the only access I have to hobby resources. Now Horizon comes along, to my understanding discontinues kits all together and raises prices, which makes those $55.00 SD40-2s jump to $120.00 (and the RTR versions were only $75.00 before the Horizon take over) and makes getting my hands on the grubby little things damn near impossible because I have to travel 150 miles to the nearest retail establishment, who probably can't get them iether becasue he can't place a large eneugh minimum order. Which makes Caboose Hobbies, which is now a whopping 575 mile one way trip the closest source of Athearn for me. What really makes this a sore spot for me, is I really liked Athearn. Athearn had everything I wanted for the least expensive price and I was happy. I wanted an SD45. Athearns was $35.00 Next closest was Bachmann's for $75.00. If needed an F-Unit. $25.00 please for Athearns. Less than the price of Life-Like's piece of junk from the train set line. Not to mention a most bewildering array of freight cars that would take me years to assembe all of. That is all gone for me now. I now have to make a difficult adjustment to find a new source of kits. Locomotives I am in a bind, as I went from a $50.00 bill to at least a $100 bill going bye bye for a new locomotive, and none of them just have that rugged Athearn feal I have come to appreciate and admire. So you can see, I have been burned heavily by this Horizon fiasco and their antics have pissed me off greatly. I to am turned off by the high prices I am seeing. But like has been mentioned before. I don't have to pay them and I refuse to. <br /> <br />On a side note, as of late, I have done some freight car scratchbuilding as kind of a personal protest to the Horizon take over of Athearn. Just get some trucks couplers, a bottle of paint, and some decals, and you can still turn out a pretty inexpensive freight car. I priced out what I payed for what went into a 40 foot Double sheathed box car, was less than $5.00. the most expensive things being the Trucks, and the Couplers.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag
Update Reply
Subscriber & Member Login
Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!
Login
Register
Users Online
There are no community member online
Search the Community
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Model Railroader Newsletter
See all
Sign up for our FREE e-newsletter
and get model railroad news in your inbox!
Sign up