As I sit here thumbing through my 08 Walther catalog, searching ebay and reading the forums here on trains.com. I came to the conclusion, I need to learn some vendor history.
Is Athern still making anything? Or did they get bought up by someone? I believe Roundhouse has been long gone, and by the look of Atherns Box, they aquired Roundhouse, or allways owned them, or the same company owned both...
Anyways, could you guys give me a breif run down on whos who?
It would also help me figure out whats a good price on ebay, versus the walther catalog. I want to compare apples to apple, not oranges.
Thanks as allways,
Ken
I assume you are referring to HO, but the same happened to Athearn and Roundhouse N.
Horizon Hobbies bought both Roundhouse and Athearn, and continues to make most of both lines. The reissues under the Roundhouse name have been RTR only, no kits. The new Athearn line still has some kits, including some ex-roundhouse items.
Model Power bought Mantua, and are reissuing some of the line under the "Classics" name.
In both cases, some improvements have been made with the re-issues.
Walters bought Life-Like, who had bought most of the Varney line decades ago. Walters has kept the Proto2K portion (nothing to do with Varney) of Life-Like going, but I believe the low end stuff (ex-Varney cars) is history.
Bowser bought Penn-Line, Stewart, some Varney locomotives, Cal-Scale, Cary, and Selly. The locomotives (except for Stewart which were fine as-is) have been improved and are generally available. Bowser also bought some other lines of die cast locomotives (Arbour Models and one other) but probably cannot re-use the dies.
I'm not sure what happened to Silver Streak and Ulrich. I believe some Silver Streak is still being made, but the Ulrich line is dead.
Labelle is still alive under new ownership and is producing with improvements.
Of the plastic freight car lines, I believe Accu-Craft, Red Caboose, and Bowser are all original (new) tooling with their respective companies.
Rivarossi was orginally imported by AHM. AHM eventually was reorganized as IHC, and switched their source to Mehano instead of Rivarossi (not sure of the time sequence of events). Rivarossi was imported by Walters for a while, and then was sold to Hornby. I believe they are still selling under the Rivarossi name.
Others can correct any errors, and will have additional information.
Fred W
I believe Athearn bought all the Roundhouse. Not sure how the Horizon thing goes, but buggers me their now in Walthers anymore. I'd love the kits back, but Blackstone is looking good at least for new engines RTR in brass. Have to hit ebay for the kits if they show up or the web if any store has any lingering stock like I found once.
Model Die Casting (Roundhouse), Athearn, and McHenry Couplers are all owned by Horizon Hobbies of Champaign, Illinois, which is a competitor of Walthers in the hobby distribution business, so that's why you dont see those brands in the Walthers catalog any more. Horizon publishes their own catalog.
fwright has provided a very good summary of the other major brands. To update his information about Rivarossi, that brand is now owned by Hornby of England, who also acquired a couple of other Italian brand names in the process.
As with nearly every brand name today, the new Rivarossi models are made in China.
As cacole stated, fwright has an excellent summary. My understanding is that MDC/Roundhouse focuses on early models up to WWII. Athern covers everything from there forward.
Tom
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IIRC Walthers bought both Silver Streak and Ulrich some time ago and both lines faded away. Suydam is now part of Alpine Division Scale Models. Ulrich seems to have come back somewhat and now makes trucks http://www.ulrichmodels.com/
Enjoy
Paul
ArcticCat wrote: Well, being semi new to the hobby(out of it for over 20 years) I want to know if the items Im researching on ebay are going for a good price or not, there for, if Im looking at a car from vendor A and they were bought out by vendor B and still make the car, just under a different flag name, then I do not want to pay mor for it... Thats one reason.The other, I see the names here, and there, and don't know who makes high quality stuff and who sells lower quality.. so on and so on. Also, I like to know where my money is going. Im in the learning process. Sorry you took out 30-60 seconds of your life to have to read my thread... But I guess you had the choice not to open it as well... I guess you will also waiste 20 seconds or so reading this, but this time I'm not sorry... Its your own fault for opening it again.To all the others, thanks for the replys it does help me down the path of my "new" hobby. If you have more info, please pass it along.Ken
Well, being semi new to the hobby(out of it for over 20 years) I want to know if the items Im researching on ebay are going for a good price or not, there for, if Im looking at a car from vendor A and they were bought out by vendor B and still make the car, just under a different flag name, then I do not want to pay mor for it... Thats one reason.
The other, I see the names here, and there, and don't know who makes high quality stuff and who sells lower quality.. so on and so on. Also, I like to know where my money is going. Im in the learning process.
Sorry you took out 30-60 seconds of your life to have to read my thread... But I guess you had the choice not to open it as well... I guess you will also waiste 20 seconds or so reading this, but this time I'm not sorry... Its your own fault for opening it again.
To all the others, thanks for the replys it does help me down the path of my "new" hobby. If you have more info, please pass it along.
Good question Ken...sign of an intelligent consumer.
Read the questions I asked about Bachmann and you will find the same approach....and problems with people mixing old and new lines confusing the heck out the discussion.
The consolidation of the companies is a sign of a dying hobby?...many times it is.
TMT
Ken, I went thru the same exact thing about 2 years ago. I had just gotten back into the swing of things after an absence of about 20 years also (with a brief resurgence in 1995, but that's another story.) I always relied on my Walthers catalog as my source bible, & the Athearn absence really threw me-until I found out what happened. A lot has changed I've found out, still finding out, & still will have to continue to either learn or ask. Either way, I'm back in this for good now, & it will be an ongoing learning process. (then again, isn't it that way for all of us?) Good Luck!
hobo9941 wrote:I just went to the Horizon Hobbies website. No deals there. Looks like everything is full list price.
That is another sign of an industry in consolidation....with less competition there is no reason to cut prices.
The more I look, the less I like what I am seeing in this hobby.
TTM
Horizon is a hobby distributor, they sell to retail outlets. They won't sell to the public for less that their list prices. Do they even sell to the public?
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
Railphotog wrote: hobo9941 wrote:I just went to the Horizon Hobbies website. No deals there. Looks like everything is full list price.Horizon is a hobby distributor, they sell to retail outlets. They won't sell to the public for less that their list prices. Do they even sell to the public?
Yes they sell direct from their website , I recently purchased an Athearn SD40T-2 from them , had it at my door 3 days latter. Great service , whether you agree with them owning everything or not.
Jerry SP FOREVER http://photobucket.com/albums/f317/GAPPLEG/
IRONROOSTER wrote: IIRC Walthers bought both Silver Streak and Ulrich some time ago and both lines faded away. Suydam is now part of Alpine Division Scale Models. Ulrich seems to have come back somewhat and now makes trucks http://www.ulrichmodels.com/
IR:
Ye Olde Huff N Puff makes the Silver Streak kits. They have a nice web site.
http://www.yeoldehuffnpuff.com/
Alpine Division also has a nice web site.
http://www.trolleyville.com/alpinedivision/index.shtml
Also:
-Not all Tyco stuff went to Mantua. IHC got the toy-train line. Their SD24 and 2-8-0 are vastly upgraded versions. They also have sold the PRR N-what streamlined caboose. Mantua's "Classics" freight cars, now sold by Model Power, are the old Lindberg line.
-Much of Life-Like's trainset line is from Varney.
-Many of Model Power's HO trainset line was formerly Marx HO. Other stuff appears to be Cox.
-Other Cox HO went to Walthers.
I see people are trotting out the dying hobby stuff again. Oh please, I just had breakfast. Consolidation happens in every industry, especially one like this, where most of the companies don't outlast their founder's retirement. Guy wants to get out, somebody else snaps it up and keeps going. This is an old thing. It doesn't really affect me much, except when some model-airplane company decides they don't want to sell MDC kits, to which I say ____ ___ and also ___ ____ ___ ___ , but mostly __ ___.
Too_Many_Tools wrote: hobo9941 wrote:I just went to the Horizon Hobbies website. No deals there. Looks like everything is full list price.That is another sign of an industry in consolidation....with less competition there is no reason to cut prices.The more I look, the less I like what I am seeing in this hobby.
If one looks into the situation in detail, the degree of consolidation and the shrinking number of those recognized as major participants in the market place has become quite dramatic recently, although this is certainly not a trend limited to just the past few years. Rather, it has been going on for quite some time. Going back decades, Walthers absorbed many of the earlier companies who produced HO rolling stock, and so did Like Like, Bowser, et al. (as noted previously by others).
One might guess that perhaps a decade from now only Walthers, Horizon (will they really continue in model railroading?), Bachmann, probably Atlas and perhaps Bowser, will be the only major players left, having bought up all the remaining worthwhile companies or seen them withdrawn. Outside of these, the only independents will probably be some of the smaller, more-or-less, cottage industries producing craftsman kits. Of particular concern is that, outside of Branchline (and the electronics outfits), it's difficult to point to any new major players from the hobby's past ten years, who were not already a part of the industry previously in some fashion.
CNJ831
fiatfan wrote: As cacole stated, fwright has an excellent summary. My understanding is that MDC/Roundhouse focuses on early models up to WWII. Athern covers everything from there forward. Tom
Sort of...MDC-Roundhouse made 36' boxcars and reefers, and several woodside passenger cars (from 30' to 50' to 80' "Pullman Palace" cars) plus woodside cabooses and several other cars that are/were popular with those modelling the 1890-1940 era. But they also made steel 40' boxcars (including Milwaukee-style horizontal ribbed cars) and two styles of Upper Michigan type steel ore cars, and a few other cars from the early diesel era. They also made several smaller steam engines (most based on SP prototypes IIRC) but did a "flat kit" RS-3 too.
It looks like Athearn has been using the Roundhouse name for the early 20th stuff, and I think some of the more recent vintage MDC models were done under just the Athearn name??
Autobus Prime wrote: IRONROOSTER wrote: IIRC Walthers bought both Silver Streak and Ulrich some time ago and both lines faded away. Suydam is now part of Alpine Division Scale Models. Ulrich seems to have come back somewhat and now makes trucks http://www.ulrichmodels.com/IR:Ye Olde Huff N Puff makes the Silver Streak kits. They have a nice web site.http://www.yeoldehuffnpuff.com/...
...
Good to see they are still around.
And I think Con-Cor is still selling some of the old Revell stuff, such as the gondola. Bowser for a time offered some of the Varney metal cars (which were good quality for their time) but not alas with the beautiful lithographed paint jobs that Varney featured.
There is a line of ultra cheap cars I see at some hobby shops that clearly looks like it is the old Varney plastic line. A careful craftsman can make a decent looking car out of Varney origins.
Stated another way, injection molds for plastic are durable, expensive and have value when a firm fails, and if someone makes the stuff and prices it right so somebody buys it, these old lines can live on and on. No harm in it except if beginners load up on cheap stuff that gives them trouble so they give up on the hobby. It is ironic that if you stick with the hobby long enough someday you will be talented enough to make the cheap trains of your early years actually run .....
Dave Nelson
dknelson wrote: There is a line of ultra cheap cars I see at some hobby shops that clearly looks like it is the old Varney plastic line. A careful craftsman can make a decent looking car out of Varney origins.
dk:
Yes, that would be Life-Like. You can even see a raised oval on the underside where "VARNEY" was obliterated.
Red Ball kits are currently being reissued in plastic.
Very messy webpage:
http://www.mrrwarehouse.com/MRW-Made/Red_Ball_1.htm
Here's a really old one! Herkimer extruded streamliner kits, folks. Not only that, but they've innovated. O is available, as of 2007:
http://www.okengines.com/products.shtml
Does anybody know what happened to Bear Locomotive Co, who was making the Hobbytown of Boston line? I had heard that the owner had stopped production, and was perhaps trying to sell the line. I'd like to be proven wrong, however. If the kits are out of production, I'm sure they'll be back, sooner or later.
Walthers has taken over several companies over the years, they bought the Train Miniatures line of HO freight car kits in the 1980's and used them as the basis of the Walthers HO line. Those cars I believe are sold RTR as part of the Trainline line. Magnuson made structure kits in resin IIRC, I'm not sure if they were always a subsidiary of Walthers or if Walthers bought them. Anyway, several Magnuson kits (Walthers Water St. HQ building, White Tower/Castle restaurant) were re-done by Walthers as plastic kits.
BTW Tyco was a subsidiary or product line of Mantua for many years. Mantua started in 1926 and I think Tyco was around by c.1950 or so...I have a Kalmbach "how to" book from 1952 that shows an engine with "TYCO" on the tender. IIRC the Tyco name came from "Tyler Company" for John Tyler, owner of Mantua.
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
R. T. POTEET wrote:Someone - Fred W??? - stated that Bowser had acquired Arbour Models How they came into the possession of Bowser I do not know!!!
The previous owner may have paid Bowser to remove them from their property.
Jim
You're kidding, right? You look at the website of one distributor who doesn't focus on selling direct to the public and use that as evidence that there is no price competition? If you looked instead at the web sites of the dozens and dozens of on-line and brick-and-mortar shops, you'd see brisk competition and street prices well below list price.
Since I've been in marketing for many years, I can say with complete confidence that consolidation does not necessarily indicate a market that is shrinking. Consolidation can happen to any market (in growth or decline) if there are benefits in productivity, efficiency, or market access. The worldwide market for automobiles continues to grow, yet those manufacturers have been consolidating almost since the first decade of the market's existence. Likewise home appliances (an amazing number of different name plates are used by a few manufacturers in the US, for example). Oil companies continue to consolidate ... does that mean that cars, refrigerators and gasoline are all on their way out?
One measure of the vitality of any market is the diversity of products it produces. By that measure, the model railroading market has never been better. But to see that diversity, one has to look beyond HO steam-era equipment and scratchbuilding. Just look at the growth in N scale, large scale, and highly specialized, prototype-specific locos and rolling stock, especially in HO. A mass-produced GP40X? RS-32/36? There are a couple of dozen highly specialized plastic or hybrid steamers based on different prototypes available at any one time, many with sound. This kind of diversity was unheard of when I entered the hobby in the 1970s after its last purported brush with extinction (at the hands of slot cars -- remember those?).
With the diversity of offerings has come the specialization of manufacturers. Freed from the need for (relatively) large size by web-based marketing and the availability of CAD and CAM (Computer-Aided-Design and -Manufacturing) for building models, smaller manufacturers can now operate efficiently and can be more responsive to market segments too small for the big guys to care about. And speaking of the big guys, quite often today they have actually diversified their production to mulitple smaller manufacturers overseas ... there may actually be more individual sites turning out model engines today than ever, albeit perhaps with fewer brand names.
Since this thread has been co-opted by the "Hobby is Dying" crowd, I'll mention the same thing I posted recently in my blog, that one's view of the health of model railroading is probably determined mostly by your personality and perspective, not by any market realities. The hobby is now so diverse and far-flung, with so many specialized suppliers able to reach out directly via the Internet, that it's hard to get a handle on it. As I mentioned in the blog, the "World's Greatest Hobby" group estimated the US market alone to have 500,000 participants and $500 Million in annual sales. Here's the press release. Sure WGH has a bias, but so also may the Prophets of Hobby Doom.
Bottom line, things have changed. If your primary enjoyment and goal in the hobby is to build a relatively few highly-detailed models, you may not view those changes as positive. If your primary enjoyment and goal in the hobby is to get a complete layout up and running, you probably view the hobby very positively right now. In the early days, Tinplaters with loops and loops of track running on mostly unscenicked tables were viewed as the epitome of the hobby. Later, HO scratchbuilders were viewed near the top of the model railroading heap. Now, more complete layouts in a variety of scales draw most of the attention of the commercial model press, much to the frustration of some.
(Look out, forum heresy coming.) It doesn't really matter to each of us personally if the hobby is shrinking or growing overall -- because a large percentage of what the market produces is not going to be of interest to each of us as individuals (wrong scale, wrong era, wrong prototype, etc., etc.). But the effect of diversification and computer-aided product design and marketing means that almost every one of us has a wider variety of models and other products from which to choose than ever in the hobby's history, no question. (Except maybe those modeling 1910 or earlier-- sorry, Dave H.)
Thus the effect of the current state of the hobby is to make it more interesting to a wider variety of people than ever before (Thomas to DCC/sound to HO prototype fidelity to Large Scale et al). The scratchbuild-everything-run-only-HO-steam segment may be declining, but that's not the whole hobby by any means. Those of us interested in operation, in prototype fidelity, or in getting the basic elements of a running layout in place quickly have it great right now -- better than ever.
And it may seem materialistic to say so, but the longevity of a market is determined by revenues, not craftsmanship. Whether there will still be a lot of HO scratchbuilders around in 40 years is hard to say. But signs are that money will still be spent on model railroading. And in any case, is there anything that could matter less to an individual hobbyist today than the state of the model railroading market in 2050 -- or in 1950?
Given that I think the whole question of whether the hobby is growing or shrinking is immaterial to each of us today and that it's largely a matter of personal perspective, I'm not going to spend any more time participating in the flurry of assertions and counter-assertions that may ensue ... but go ahead, knock yourselves out!
ByronModel RR Blog
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
cuyama wrote:(Look out, forum heresy coming.) It doesn't really matter to each of us personally if the hobby is shrinking or growing overall -- because a large percentage of what the market produces is not going to be of interest to each of us as individuals (wrong scale, wrong era, wrong prototype, etc., etc.). But the effect of diversification and computer-aided product design and marketing means that almost every one of us has a wider variety of models and other products from which to choose than ever in the hobby's history, no question. (Except maybe those modeling 1910 or earlier-- sorry, Dave H.)ByronModel RR Blog
Model RR Blog
Byron
A very good post. And I would have to say as one of those few(?) who model late 19th Century, things are looking up in our direction, too. The internet and its enablement of communities of interest to communicate rapidly and effectively has revitalized the basement and part time hobby suppliers. No longer does a model railroader with a day job who makes 2-10 dozen extra parts or cars or locomotive castings have to advertise in Model Railroader and wait months to sell his excess production. He produces the items, announces them in the appropriate Yahoo groups, and sells them direct and/or via eBay. This is happening in many niche areas of the hobby which may or may not have a large enough market to be served by plastic mass production. But you won't ever find out about these items at the big on-line discounters or in the pages of Model Railroader.
In HOn3 for example, there are probably less than 20 hobby shops in the U.S. that carry a reasonable sampling of what is available in the scale/gauge. But those 20 (or fewer) shops do a great of scouting and working with the basement and part-time suppliers to carry and sell their lines. Is Trainworld going to do this? No, Trainworld's mission is to move unsold quantities for the major manufacturers. And they are very good at what they do. So, as Byron points out, the diversity of the hobby is such that even if you looked at the books of some major manufacturers, you still wouldn't have the complete picture.
At the same time, as this thread demonstrates, the longevity of plastic and metal injection dies has kept many items from the "glory years" still available for those who wish to buy them. So at least for the present, we have the best of both worlds.
my thoughts
wjstix wrote: Magnuson made structure kits in resin IIRC, I'm not sure if they were always a subsidiary of Walthers or if Walthers bought them. Anyway, several Magnuson kits (Walthers Water St. HQ building, White Tower/Castle restaurant) were re-done by Walthers as plastic kits.
Magnuson made structure kits in resin IIRC, I'm not sure if they were always a subsidiary of Walthers or if Walthers bought them. Anyway, several Magnuson kits (Walthers Water St. HQ building, White Tower/Castle restaurant) were re-done by Walthers as plastic kits.
JAKS Industries had been producing the Magnuson resin kit line of structures. I just checked their site and Magnuson is no longer listed, but the Magnuson line of kits still appears in their catalog under Scale Structures LTD. SS LTD also has small some resin kits that used to be made by Woodland Scenics, like Meltnick's Ice; as well as a line of cast metal detail parts, mostly for buildings. SS LTD also lists Nevada Car & Foundry, which looks like machine shop and mining equipment. JAKES also produce / distribute Alloy Forms vehicles.
http://www.jaksind.com/
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
Too_Many_Tools wrote: hobo9941 wrote:I just went to the Horizon Hobbies website. No deals there. Looks like everything is full list price.That is another sign of an industry in consolidation....with less competition there is no reason to cut prices.The more I look, the less I like what I am seeing in this hobby.TTM
No, I don't agree. I've noticed over the years that ANY company when they sell their items direct, nearly always sell them at MSRP. That goes for Walthers (unless they are having a sale) and most other companies. So companies selling items themselves as a rule ask MSRP and its never a good idea to buy direct because of that.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
riogrande5761 wrote: Too_Many_Tools wrote: hobo9941 wrote:I just went to the Horizon Hobbies website. No deals there. Looks like everything is full list price.That is another sign of an industry in consolidation....with less competition there is no reason to cut prices.The more I look, the less I like what I am seeing in this hobby.TTM No, I don't agree. I've noticed over the years that ANY company when they sell their items direct, nearly always sell them at MSRP. That goes for Walthers (unless they are having a sale) and most other companies. So companies selling items themselves as a rule ask MSRP and its never a good idea to buy direct because of that.
Yeah, never buy from the manufacturer, or Walthers unless it's the last resort.
Jay
C-415 Build: https://imageshack.com/a/tShC/1
Other builds: https://imageshack.com/my/albums
That may be the case, same with the walthers catalog too.
Both sources are useful for digging up specific part numbers to provide to one or the other LHS with the order so they might not have to waste too much time digging up part numbers.
It is my understanding that Horizon bought Athearn lock stock and barrel. That also includes Roundhouse. Because Horizion competes with Walthers for YOUR train money the Walthers no longer carry Athearn.
Now to mix the pot a little bit, It is my understanding that Blue Box is no longer USA made, everything comes or will come out of China at some point in the future under the old Athearn Blue Box Kits. You can learn if a Blue Box is USA made or China Made on the box label itself. Ive done both and cannot tell the difference however all gets inspected and I keep LOTS of spare parts on hand.
Life Like Heritage and Proto (One and same?) was bought by Walthers. I think also the pricing has finally come down a little bit because they were stubborn with the 400 dollar steam engines with DCC and Sound that cannot pull very well upgrade. Little by little they are getting better. I have one of the new 2-10-2's that is a joy to drive along with the older QSI Y3.
Broadway Limited is no longer QSI. They may carry SOME products with QSI but I think they would rather ditch QSI and crank out everything under thier so called blueline. However QSI are gaining use in factory engines from Walthers and others while others like MRC and Bachmann hang tight.
Riverossi, AHM and IHC will always be one and the same, the difference is the flanges for me. Pizza Cutter or non-pizza cutter.
I recall a myth that Athearn's President used to sit down with Roundhouse's President over breakfast and sort out which company will produce which kits. I have not ever been able to comfirm or defuse this story.
I bought a tube of Liquid Glue from Horizion for 9 dollars including shipping recently to meet a need during a very large amount of construction. I have two tubes ready to be brought home from the LHS at less than 7 dollars. So... lesson, Manufactor Direct or Walthers, Horizion will not save you money, neither will ebay. Example of Ebay, I have watched Kibri Barges of a specific type. Two are availible on ebay for about 80 dollars total (With shipping) while the Walthers show them in transit to arrive about 30 dollars MSRP and I can expect to pay 40-50 bucks with the usual LHS discount in 2008.
It pays to learn the items that you are considering to buy and to shop around, research the item and buy it from the vendor.. either internet, hobby shop, direct or other at the best price you can afford or perhaps find.
Wandering a little off topic here... to this day I never understand why One Widget for 1.00 MSRP can vary wildly across several sources availible to the customer today. Some will cost more with shipping others cost .20 cents shipped to your door after tax.
MSRP may be a obselete breed here and is such a dinosaur as not to know it's pending demise. For example, I found a BLI locomotive that was rare during my hunt at a Ohio Store for MSRP at 360 dollars plus shipping... way too much. I ended up buying it direct from BLI outlet for about 225 total. I bet the Ohio engine is STILL on the shelf today.
cuyama wrote: Too_Many_Tools wrote: hobo9941 wrote:I just went to the Horizon Hobbies website. No deals there. Looks like everything is full list price.That is another sign of an industry in consolidation....with less competition there is no reason to cut prices.The more I look, the less I like what I am seeing in this hobby.You're kidding, right? You look at the website of one distributor who doesn't focus on selling direct to the public and use that as evidence that there is no price competition? If you looked instead at the web sites of the dozens and dozens of on-line and brick-and-mortar shops, you'd see brisk competition and street prices well below list price.Since I've been in marketing for many years, I can say with complete confidence that consolidation does not necessarily indicate a market that is shrinking. Consolidation can happen to any market (in growth or decline) if there are benefits in productivity, efficiency, or market access. The worldwide market for automobiles continues to grow, yet those manufacturers have been consolidating almost since the first decade of the market's existence. Likewise home appliances (an amazing number of different name plates are used by a few manufacturers in the US, for example). Oil companies continue to consolidate ... does that mean that cars, refrigerators and gasoline are all on their way out? One measure of the vitality of any market is the diversity of products it produces. By that measure, the model railroading market has never been better. But to see that diversity, one has to look beyond HO steam-era equipment and scratchbuilding. Just look at the growth in N scale, large scale, and highly specialized, prototype-specific locos and rolling stock, especially in HO. A mass-produced GP40X? RS-32/36? There are a couple of dozen highly specialized plastic or hybrid steamers based on different prototypes available at any one time, many with sound. This kind of diversity was unheard of when I entered the hobby in the 1970s after its last purported brush with extinction (at the hands of slot cars -- remember those?).With the diversity of offerings has come the specialization of manufacturers. Freed from the need for (relatively) large size by web-based marketing and the availability of CAD and CAM (Computer-Aided-Design and -Manufacturing) for building models, smaller manufacturers can now operate efficiently and can be more responsive to market segments too small for the big guys to care about. And speaking of the big guys, quite often today they have actually diversified their production to mulitple smaller manufacturers overseas ... there may actually be more individual sites turning out model engines today than ever, albeit perhaps with fewer brand names. Since this thread has been co-opted by the "Hobby is Dying" crowd, I'll mention the same thing I posted recently in my blog, that one's view of the health of model railroading is probably determined mostly by your personality and perspective, not by any market realities. The hobby is now so diverse and far-flung, with so many specialized suppliers able to reach out directly via the Internet, that it's hard to get a handle on it. As I mentioned in the blog, the "World's Greatest Hobby" group estimated the US market alone to have 500,000 participants and $500 Million in annual sales. Here's the press release. Sure WGH has a bias, but so also may the Prophets of Hobby Doom.Bottom line, things have changed. If your primary enjoyment and goal in the hobby is to build a relatively few highly-detailed models, you may not view those changes as positive. If your primary enjoyment and goal in the hobby is to get a complete layout up and running, you probably view the hobby very positively right now. In the early days, Tinplaters with loops and loops of track running on mostly unscenicked tables were viewed as the epitome of the hobby. Later, HO scratchbuilders were viewed near the top of the model railroading heap. Now, more complete layouts in a variety of scales draw most of the attention of the commercial model press, much to the frustration of some.(Look out, forum heresy coming.) It doesn't really matter to each of us personally if the hobby is shrinking or growing overall -- because a large percentage of what the market produces is not going to be of interest to each of us as individuals (wrong scale, wrong era, wrong prototype, etc., etc.). But the effect of diversification and computer-aided product design and marketing means that almost every one of us has a wider variety of models and other products from which to choose than ever in the hobby's history, no question. (Except maybe those modeling 1910 or earlier-- sorry, Dave H.)Thus the effect of the current state of the hobby is to make it more interesting to a wider variety of people than ever before (Thomas to DCC/sound to HO prototype fidelity to Large Scale et al). The scratchbuild-everything-run-only-HO-steam segment may be declining, but that's not the whole hobby by any means. Those of us interested in operation, in prototype fidelity, or in getting the basic elements of a running layout in place quickly have it great right now -- better than ever.And it may seem materialistic to say so, but the longevity of a market is determined by revenues, not craftsmanship. Whether there will still be a lot of HO scratchbuilders around in 40 years is hard to say. But signs are that money will still be spent on model railroading. And in any case, is there anything that could matter less to an individual hobbyist today than the state of the model railroading market in 2050 -- or in 1950? Given that I think the whole question of whether the hobby is growing or shrinking is immaterial to each of us today and that it's largely a matter of personal perspective, I'm not going to spend any more time participating in the flurry of assertions and counter-assertions that may ensue ... but go ahead, knock yourselves out! ByronModel RR Blog
LOL...A very long discussion and NOT ONE DOLLAR AND CENTS EXAMPLE OF COMPETITIVE PRICING.
Why don't you give us an example of this competitiveness that you speak of?
I am looking to buy a Lionel Polar Express Disappearing Hobo Car for the Polar Express O gauge set.
Show us using links to sellers where this competitiveness is.
I and my wallet will be waiting.
Thanks