Hi,
So I have an Athearn Iron Horse set. It came with EZ track, but was missing a piece. I bought one off eBay, but it was Bachmann. It seems to be compatible, however, and there isn't much on the internet about "Athearn EZ track." So how and why did Athearn get a hold of Bachmann track?
I don't know when it started, but IIRC, Atheran has been using Bachman EZ track in their train sets for a while now. Makes alot of sense when you consider that by virtue of Bachman's ubiquity EZ Track is probably the most common track seen in train sets these days.
Nothing new as far as the industry is concerned. There's lots of history of one company sourcing product from other companies, even those considered competitors.
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Ya, EZ Track is Bachmann. I don't believe Athearn has ever made track - at least not unless it was back in the 1950's or something. I think at one time Athearn train sets came with Atlas snap-track??
The Athearn set I have from ~10 years ago came with Atlas True-Track. I don't exactly know when Athearn started using Bachmann track, but I think it was within the last 4 or 5 years - I have some reference books that describe Atlas sets as coming with Atlas True-Track.
Be glad it's Bachmann. The Atlas stuff may look better, but it is much more of a pain to work with when setting up and taking down a temporary oval. The track sections are loosely clipped to the roadbed, the rail joiners are not crimped to the rails, and if it gets kicked or something gets set on it (such as Christmas presents) the spike heads break off. That said, it is much more realistic in terms of roadbed profile and spike head size, and if I were to build a permenant layout using sectional track I would rather use Atlas than Bachmann.
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