being on the east coast I was able to go to the Springfield show. 4 huge buildings of trains. I spoke to one of the execs from Athearn and asked about of few of the 'rumors' going around. 1. Athearn will continue with limited runs that hopefully sell out before they are relesed. —It is true they do not want to warehouse any more stuff. He was very aggressive about this Who could blame them he explained to me about the tons of stuff they had sold off cheap and almost sent to the chipper. 2. They are not working on an SD70ACe or an ES anything, although that may change. They will not be rereleasing an SDP40. -not enough interest there. 3. Not only is labor cheaper in China but they can also have them take care of things like getting a specific color match that saves about$10,000-15,000 alone. 4. Sometimes Athearn and Proto 2000 motors are made by the same people in China, altough they obviously have different specs. I did tell him about how ethonol tanks were unavailable for a while (still?) and 3 packs when they were new were $75 and now sellingon ebay for over $100. He said thats rediculous and when they hear that they will start thinking about a new run of such a product.
Kato only said that they will be rereleasing the C44-9 in SP and UP names only coming this May. Although that may change. They are not working on an SD70ACe an ES either, although that may change too. I actually did ask them if it's true they were more interested in the Japanese market than ours and I just got a dirty look.
Thank God I found an older -9 yesterday for only $90 as you see how much the new SD 40 is. I ran it and it's perfect. I haven't seen one for sale in a while so I grabbed it.
So, those were the main points of the conversations, although Athearn was much more talkative than Kato.
If this is stuff ya'll knew then I'm the one behind. Dan