Kalmbach, Union Pacific and The Public Purse.

[wallyworld]

In the April issue of Garden Railways, Marc Horovitz’s editorial; “A serpent in the garden” addresses the UP corporate licensing of it’s logo and royalty payments.. I applaud Kalmbach for endorsing Marc’s position. Marc states; “ And finally, it just seems morally wrong for one of the oldest and largest corporations in the entire world to have its fingers in the pockets of these small companies. Bravo for both Marc and Kalmbach to have the courage to tell it like it is. Right after I read this editorial, I was browsing and came upon this article about the UP Museum….how are the two related? Look at the list of non UP corporate contributors and the amounts invested to put UP’s history and name out there with the public. Over 30,000 people have walked through its doors. It seems likely that at least some of the donors are modelers and I wonder how many of them have had additional money removed from their pockets by UP when they make a purchase although they have willingly helped preserve the history of this company?

Link to article :

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11384111&BRD=2554&PAG=461&dept_id=507134&rfi=6

[tree68]

I saw an ad the other day for something in the model railroad arena. Price was $x, $x+1 for UP.

Alas, this is an excellent topic for a debating team, since both sides of the argument have valid points to make.

[Anonymous]

Also, as we all know, many of the models we buy are made in SE Asia. Why? Cheap labor. But, we get charged the same price as if it was being made over here. It's called charging what the market will tolerate. UP obviously knows about charging what the market will tolerate, and decided to make some pocket change at modeler's expense.

Look at the old Santa Fe and New York Central, they paid Lionel to make tooling for the postwar F units!