Went to the website to order a milled frame for an older Kato F7 and was rather surprised to see: After nearly 30 years of making model railroad products, most notably track cleaning cars, Aztec Manufacturing has closed its doors. Bummer. Great products/service and pricing.
Yeah, this was reported previously on one or more of the forums. Caught a lot of people by surprise especially those who, due to budgetary constraints, could not justify having legacy locomotives milled and DCC'ed as well as adding DCC to more modern DCC ready locomotives. Many opted to do the DCC ready locos first as they were easier. For those who remained committed to analog DC there could very well be a buyers market on older non DCC ready locos.
About a year and a half ago I decided I needed some track cleaning cars and after doing some research I settled on the Aztec line of cars. That research also consisted of calling John Claudino Aztecs owner about my unique operating radiuses and what would work and he was extremely helpful with advice on how to modify the cars to work on my tight radiuses. Two of his models the Predator and the Track Star are now part of my cleaning fleet and they were and still are excellent products well made and well thought out. He thought enough about his products that I received several follow up telephone calls after I had made my purchases to see how they were doing in my particular circumstances and he was a joy to talk to and very knowledgeable about model railroading. To those that have thought about purchasing a track cleaning car and have set on the fence you have missed out on one or more of the top products made in that line. Plus he featured other products also. Hopefully someone with the same dedication to quality will come along and purchase the line and tooling.
I have known John since shortly after he started printing cars (way before this track cleaners). He's a great guy and someone I looked forward to seeing again at the train shows (after he moved from the Bay area to Nevada), but there comes a time when you have to say it's time to stop. Trains were his second business (machine shop was his first) and it's time for him to retire and have some fun (hopefully with trains). Hoped that someone else would take over the void that he left but it doesn't look like that is going to happen. I'm still hoping to run into John at the train shows.
When I did a dogpile search for Aztectrains.com, I was given almost everything under the sun related to Aztectrains.com Model Railroad Accessories. Track cleaners in scales from Z to HO to G, plus N scale DCC frames | Aztec Manufacturing this was almost at the bottom Tom
I guess this is a lesson to all of us to each have a fully realized machine shop and learn how to use the tools so we can all make our own parts. Doug
A friend had a machinist mill his Kato frames, and they promptly crumbled. It’s not as easy as it looks...
Did you all know that the machine shop that turned out most of the best brass N Scale locomotives made these in their spare time? The majority of their work were those cool electronic toilets the Japanese love so much...
DCESharkman said: ↑ The site says all the tooling and equipment has been sold....... All, Sold to who? Will this be a MODEL RAILROAD Manufacturer or a Private Individual who is skilled in Both Fields? I hope this one is not next! http://www.cannonandco.net Tom
jtomstarr, I'm confused. You seem to think the acquisition of Cannon 7 Co. by Dave Hussey was a bad thing. Why?
With NWSL and Aztec leaving.. I was curious to see which one of our parts sources would be the Next to Depart that's all. Sorry to have you think the way you are . Tom
With the advent of Shapeways, et al, this may be a reason for other specialty manufacturers going away. It may not be simply the market for such items dying away, but a shifting of our resources.
I don’t think it is that, it’s just folks aging out and dying out. Shapeways itself is on the downslope, as they’ve shot themselves in the foot with higher prices and poorer quality prints, so people are starting to buy their own printers. And shapeways is plastic, not metal.
As Cannon had been mentioned, I was thinking more of shells and detail parts. Shapeways has been printing in metal.
Shapeways does print in metal, have never ordered one, but last time I looked the tolerances were still 'not there' and VERY expensive for any mass of material. I've had the ability to compare Shapeways to some of the newer printers, and lets see, 3X better quality for .5 price. Yeah. No comparison on surface finish either. Still have some issues with warp during cure, but the entire issue with surface finish quality is GONE. That entire 3rd-party print market approach has been useful, but evolutionary. Problem is there's very little in there for the designers and everything in there for Shapeways. Shapeways last stuff for me was significantly better, but the order before that was borderline unusable due to surface print striation. My son bought his own 3D printer (hobbyist grade) and is testing my designs on it now. I'd met John Claudino out at Reno, John Coots introduced me to him. Remember the DCC adapter frame swaps was basically a service, not a product, so I'm not sure there was value in the 'sale of the company' particularly when the standard now is a DCC-compliant frame even in DC models. I had a friend with a full machine shop and he was just as capable of milling his own frames and did some of my work. Before DCC-compliant frames and new-issue product he had a pretty good demand, but it's a declining one for sure. And decoders are some much smaller than they used to be as well. It doesn't all have a bad ending, I was very glad to see Grandt Line find a buyer for their company when it looked like all was lost.
