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[quote]QUOTE: The free ride may be over but despite the Chicken Littles, the sky isn't falling. The 3% wholesale royalties is not going to break the bank or "kill the industry," even when it's written in screaming capital letters" [/quote] Well, we're certainly headed down that slippery slope. And for anyone who is snickering right now because, quote "I don't model the UP", (and I've seen plenty of those posts) be assured, your favorite road will be jumping on the bandwagon shortly. Now that the UP camel has got his snot-encrusted nose under the tent, you'd better be prepared to start paying extortion, er, I mean "licensing fees" to every other road, not to mention EMD, GE, Trinity, Gunderson et al. when they decide to get in on the act. That oughta be good for another 5 or 10 bucks a model. Maybe that's no big thing to the high rollers who never let anything less than Overland brass touch their rails, but to me, that $5 is one less bottle of paint, or a decal, or something else that I could have bought, meaning that some other manufacturer has to suffer...and $5 here and $5 there eventually starts to add up. By the way, if you haven't noticed, Accurail has already quit producing anything with UP markings, and a small decal manufacturer I talked with said (off the record, so no names) (and Thank God it's not Oddballs!) that rather than pay UP up front and go through the all the hassles, he would stop making UP decals altogether. And if the UP was really all that concerned about how their trademark looked on a model train, then they should really be delighted that more "gag" UP cars sporting derogatory slogans, such as "Billing America" (and far worse things) are showing up at train shows now than ever before. These are just some of the real impacts on the MRR ground of this hair-brained licensing fee scheme. But what amazes me, is that apparently there are some people around here who support the idea of paying more and having fewer choices, and figure somehow this is a healthy thing for our hobby. "But by golly, we're helping UP 'protect' their trademark!" Big deal. And as John Gibson says, "That's My Word."
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