I am returning to the hobby after being away since about 1989. cannot find many of my old favorite suppliers and some of the ones I do recognize are way different. What happened to shake a box kits and build it yourself steam locomotives? It seems that most of my collection is form the stone age, I looked at the Atlas site and what they call Classic is post 2000. Did the manufacturers start swapping molds. Does anyone have a list of what went where? What happened to Front Range products? Bachman is now a major player in scale trains?
Different, isn't it? Yes, Bachmann is now major, and some of their stuff is pretty good. The rest is same as it ever was. Athearn bought Roundhouse, and neither one of them lets you install your own handrails and brakewheels any more. There are a lot of improvements. Most of the changes are improvements, really, though some of us fellow graybeards find DCC more trouble than it's worth. Whether you will or not depends on how good you are with a soldering iron, and how much you hate block control. And, of course, the prices are up, though what prices aren't? Still, I miss the box-shaking kits too, and the discount that came with them. My suggestion is make the internet your friend. I think there have been more molds lost than swapped. But you'll be amazed what new stuff has appeared. That part is awfully nice.
The majority of the market seems to want ready-to-run models and the "box shaking" now occurs in the far east. The remnants of Front Range products are now here: https://ppw-aline.com/collections/front-range-gp7-9-bodies-athearn-genesis-chassis Bowser dropped its steam loco kit line about a decade ago. Also about a decade ago, Bachmann's parent company bought out its major competitor in the off-shore model railroad equipment subcontract assembly business. They then stopped doing business with most of their outside customers and used the extra available manufacturing capacity for Bachmann and a handful of other in-house brands.
Wow, I have at least 8 of the Front Range GP7 and GP9 locomotives that I paid less than $30.00 for. I do not see paying &0.00 for a modified chassis.
Another significant development in the past 30 years is the change in business model by most model railroad companies to limited production runs. Models get announced about 6-12 months prior to release to retailers, with a small time window during which the models can be pre-ordered/reserved. The companies then tailor the production quantities quite closely to the number of pre-orders/reservations they receive. One upside is the availability of a wider range of models and roadnames (and generally with more roadname specific details). Downsides include higher prices; less opportunity to examine a model in person (or to wait for a review), since it could well sell out before it reaches retailers; the likelihood that a given model or roadname will be cancelled if the number of pre-orders/reservations fails to meet a minimum production quantity threshold dictated by the offshore assembly subcontractor; and difficulty in trying to locate a specific model that was made just last year - not to mention a decade, or two, ago.
I recently went on the Walthers site and was shocked at how little was available and how many manufacturers were listed that had not product.When I picked up the catalog I was amazed that one book now cover everything for Z to G scale. I also noticed that every Locomotive seems to have its own page. In the old days you would open the book to Athearn and look for a locomotive and you would see that locomotive listed in 10 or 15 schemes. I used to buy only undecorated locomotives which I would detail and paint. I still have a box of shells so I could swap shells if I wanted a different railroad. At least Detail Associates, Details West, Cannon and company and Utah Pacific are still available. I guess I will just hoard my 400 blue box Athearn and MDC car kits and locomotives and play in my own little corner of the hobby. I see some improvements in the hobby but I also see the influence of business managers as opposed to visionaries. Unfortunately this is also a product of our modern instant gratification syndrome. It seems only a few old gray haired farts are willing to put in the sweat equity. I am sure my opinions are not going to change the hobby so I guess I will just have to accept it on some level.
Hi Gary D Welcome to the original model train forum. There a few means at our disposal for broadening our accessibility to model trains and minimizing the cost thereof. I buy mostly used on eBay, but there many other places that used equipment is available. But be careful....there are many shady characters out there ready to take advantage! Knowledge is Power...... investigate the products offered, and the seller. But remember....It's a hobby.....It is supposed to be fun!!!! Jim
The days of a given model in a given roadname usually being in stock over a long period of time are over. If you look at the history of past model releases on the Atlas site, you'll see that a new loco model generally gets made in a half-dozen, or so, roadnames, usually with two roadnumbers each. Then, maybe every subsequent year or two, there is another production run, which includes a new set of roadnames. Sometimes a popular roadname will be re-run, but with different roadnumbers. http://www.atlasrr.com/hoproducts.htm
A lot has changed since 1989. I have been working on my layout off and on for over 30 years. My progress was extremely slow in the late 90's for almost 10 years because I have no hobby shops at all in my area. Locomotives have improved a lot. I can remember having to do a lot of work to the old Athearn locomotives, and ended up remotoring all of them. tlas came out with their line of Alco locomotives with the Kato drive. I scarfed up a dozen of them and custom painted them for my freelance railroad. Bachmann has come a long way. Years ago I wouldn;t touch a Bachmann locomotive with a 10 foot pole. They brought out their Spectrum line which now is fairly good. Walthers bought out Life Like I believe. Athearn has improved a lot also. Their Genisis line of locomotives is excellent. Guess they had to keep up with the competition. The shake the box freight cars are hard to find any more. Most of the freight equipment is a lot more highly detailed than th eold Athearn blue box kits, but them a lot more expensive. The majority of my freight equipment is the old blue box kits, many of them starting as undecorated kits which I also custom painted for my freelance railroad, and some done with dry transfers for railroads that were not factory decorated. I do have some newer freight cars that have a lot more detail, such as Kadee, but when they are put into t train, it is really hard to tell them apart from the older blue box kits. The build your own steam locomotives are pretty well history, but can be found on ebay. There are a number of manufacturers that are producing steam locomotives with some excellent detail, but almost all of them are DCC. DCC locomotives can be run on DC layouts. DCC is something that was not around in 1989. I personally am not interested in DCC as my layout was built mainly for switching and I rarely run more than one locomotive at a time being a lone operator. I do have a few DCC locomotives with sound that I use mainly at the model railroad club I run at. DCC is a must on large layouts with multiple operators. At the club we can have quite a few trains running at the same time, having meets where on train may have to stop and take a passing siding to let another pass. It can be a lot of fun running like that, but I know that I will not buy any more DCC locomotives and have no plans at all to convert my home layout to dcc. I have see way too many people on this and other forums with problems with DCC. Not having a local hobby shop or local support for DCC, it is not for me. I'll keep it simple. My DC locomotives have been serving me well for years. So long as they smoothly and do what I need, I am happy. Welcome back.
A lot of "one owner" shops and vendors have closed, but there are some good online hobby shops like - oh, I forgot this forum has a weird policy of not letting us mention vendor or shop names - I guess we need to whisper them in dark corners. I've been on train forums since 1995 and this is the only on one that forbids mentioning vendor names and to make matters worse, with all the ads, it's extremely laggy. Bowser stopped making kit steam engines years ago but you might be able to find kit steam engines at train shows and eBay. A lot has changed since the stone age. Athearn stopped making blue box kits because of the lack of demand after RTR trains became the "norm". Atlas started producing HO freight cars in the early mid-1990's and they are pretty nice. They have made newer diesels and re-issued some older ones in the "classic" line, such as the GP7 and RSD4/5. As far as molds go. Some manufacturers owners retired and decided to sell their assets and molds to larger companies. MDC and Details West went to Athearn, and Branchline kits went to Atlas and are mostly sold RTR now, although Atlas has sold a few kits in the past 5 years based on BL rolling stock. Front Range migrated to McKean, then to E&C Shops and the LBF, and finally Huber. Some could tell you a long and winding story about those lines. Some new manufacturers have appeared in HO including ExactRail in 2007, Tangent (around that time), Moloco (about 4 or 5 years ago), Fox Valley, and most recently Scale Trains was started from four guys who worked for Athearn and started that company a couple years ago. There are a few others too, including Trainworx (which is mostly N but makes a few nice HO items) and Wheels of Time (also mostly N but make HO items. Intermountain started out as an HO kit manufacturer and started offering RTR versions around 1999 or so. They also make lots of diesels and some steam engines. I've got an Intermountain SP Cab Forward, same engine as Rivarossi made but more detailed and with sound. Bowser has gone all out RTR high detail engines and rolling stock in recent years and are really blowing the socks off of modelers. It is truly the golden age of the hobby. Most of the newer high fidelity stuff is pretty expensive but very nice. If the new high fidelity models are too expensive for you, go to train shows and eBay and you'll find a lot of kits and older stuff for attractive prices. Cheers, Jim
Accurail makes some nice rolling stock kits. I've been buying 40 and 36 foot boxcars for 13-15 dollars each. However, I also add metal wheels and Kaydee couplers.
