Atlas Model Railroad Co. Agrees to Purchase BLMA Models Inc.

[Rich_S]

I will now be able to dedicate my energy and invest more of my time into www.MyMetalBusinessCard.com, which has seen rapid growth since I launched the company in 2011.

Wow, are you telling me a Metal Business Card business is a better option that producing model railroad products? I'm surprised, I would have thought it would have been the other way around. Makes me wonder about the future of the Model Railroad Industry? Just Saying......

[Spades]

I know more people with business cards than model trains.  I would take .10 of the business card market to .10 of the model railroading market

Wow, are you telling me a Metal Business Card business is a better option that producing model railroad products? I'm surprised, I would have thought it would have been the other way around. Makes me wonder about the future of the Model Railroad Industry? Just Saying......

[peteski]

Wow, are you telling me a Metal Business Card business is a better option that producing model railroad products?

I had a similar thought when I looked into Craig's new line of business.  But I suspect that the reason he left the model RR business was simply because he was tired of the hassles of dealing with the overseas manufacturing. From what I'm seeing it this thread, it is not easy being a small manufacturer having to deal with the large Chinese manufacturers. Metal cards seems like a much simpler business venture.  Just speculating...

[Robbman]

I think some clarification is in order.  It's been documented that the very first run of wheels didn't use the N scale profile developed, but rather was a scaled down HO wheel profile.  This was a factory error, and these had issues despite track work.  I believe this was well before the first release of ESMC cars with BLMA trucks.  To compound matters on the early cars, bolsters were often too tight and truck articulation didn't maneuver quite well enough.  Many folks reported that swapping the trucks fixed the running issues, but it may have been more due to the work pulling the bolster pin and freeing up the trucks than the actual change, but regardless, the excessively narrow wheels exacerbated the issue.


The corrected wheel sets allowed more room for error, and have been fine in most cases.

On the first runs, the 33" wheelsets were scaled down from the 36" drawings I provided, rather than using the 33" drawing I also provided.  The specs on both those were right at Fine:160 NMRA standard (S4.1 I think).  When the factory shrunk the 36 down, that definitely caused issues  on the 33 (along with the other stuff you mentioned).  At some point I later revised both drawings.

[up1950s]

With cards there is no prototype research needed . The customer either sends a cad , a drawing , or some ideas or demands for Craig to come up with ideas for the go ahead . Then it is mostly done . Time , effort , and whining is greatly reduced . More time to have some wine .

[Sokramiketes]

On the first runs, the 33" wheelsets were scaled down from the 36" drawings I provided, rather than using the 33" drawing I also provided.  The specs on both those were right at Fine:160 NMRA standard (S4.1 I think).  When the factory shrunk the 36 down, that definitely caused issues  on the 33 (along with the other stuff you mentioned).  At some point I later revised both drawings.

 Robbman! Thanks for the clarification.

[peteski]

With cards there is no prototype research needed . The customer either sends a cad , a drawing , or some ideas or demands for Craig to come up with ideas for the go ahead . Then it is mostly done . Time , effort , and whining is greatly reduced . More time to have some wine .

I'm not sure where you going with that.   Prototype research for N scale wheel dimensions?  Don't we use the model standards defined by NMRA (which are not scaled down prototype dimensions)?

I would think that since this is not that long ago, Robbman did provide the correct drawings for both wheels in a CAD format (electronically).  I wouldn't think that in today's world paper blueprints would be rolled into a tube and sent AIRMAIL to China.    But we won't know unless Robbman chimes in again.

[John]

Peteski .. read it again ..   with "cards"    (biz cards) ..   I re-read it a couple of times as well to catch the point ..

[daniel_leavitt2000]

I had secretly hoped that FVM, DI, Bluford, BLMA and Trainworx would pool and become a serious competitor to Atlas, Intermountain and MTL. Diversity is important to me and I feel that too many of my eggs are in the Atlas basket. A staggering 80% of my engines are Atlas. And this causes me to worry a bit.

FVM and Trainworx seem to be doing really well. Both are getting the right products out there for a good price and on time. I would love to see some more life from Bluford - How about a PD5000 hopper or 19K corn syrup tank guys?

Atlas isn't a bad home for BLMA. Just remember, a medium sized company taking over a small business is much better than that small business going it alone when the owner's heart isn't in it.

I'll try and get more info at the Springfield show. I am curious how this will be integrated into the company.

[tom mann]

The one thing that a small operation can do (Craig and Robbman) is innovate, and BLMA did so by reinventing the N scale wheel and truck. Hopefully, Atlas considers this as the assimilate the BLMA product line: because they should not just acquire inventory and half-finished products, but the spirit of innovation should come along too. I (if I were Atlas) would keep the BLMA brand as a separate, high end line of products managed by a small dedicated group of employees. 

[Rossford Yard]

Daniel,

I tend to agree with your idea that it might have been ideal, competitively speaking, to have several small companies band together. Not in the cards, I guess.

That said, since companies tended to make separate models, we may not have had truly overlapping competition, and they could have charged what they wanted for a truly hot model, even if other companies sort of help set the base prices, like $150 for locos, $25 for freight cars, etc., which the mfgs seem to adhere to, with a bit of rise in each new round of products. Whether fear of losing customers or competition does that, its hard to argue that the more options, generally, the less we pay, at least to a degree.

The hardest part about all of this would be to determine what price of any future Atlas price increases is due to inflation (here and in the Chinese production process), lack of competition, or simply spreading overhead costs out over fewer modelers, if we presume sales are static or declining (they seem to have been static at $425M at the wholesale level for the last three HMA reports, which means with inflation, they are probably decreasing at 1-3% per year).  In the end, even at the size of Atlas or Walthers, its a boutique business, and the laws of supply and demand aren't quite the same as for GM and Ford, etc.

For that matter, I guess my point is that for some of the fears that we will have fewer parts, or new body styles, it will be hard to tell exactly how this affects that.  We have never had as much as HO, never had as much as we want, and there have always been product gaps, probably due to them not being profitable in N......so, we had unfulfilled product desires before, and we will continue to have them.

If Atlas chooses to discontinue the BLMA parts, we don't really know whether BLMA may have discontinued their parts line, due to more hassle and lower profit margins and "owner energy" do we?  So, in the bigger picture, there is really no net loss to modelers, for all the fears we express every time there is some change in the MR world like this......MR will survive this takeover, and most other internal biz decisions.  It may not survive the death of the baby boomer generation in any recognizable form,  but that is a topic for another day!

As to Tom Mann's point, I don't think Atlas and Kato are too big to innovate.  They would probably need to hire some energetic folks who have that mindset, if they aren't already on staff, or even subcontract out design for new stuff like that.  But, they have at least some incentive to innovate just to survive.  I will grant FVM and BLMA were a breath of fresh air that I enjoyed quite a bit. 

I think Atlas will roll this brand in to save on marketing, but I also wonder if they could use social media, crowd sourcing, etc. as a way to get others to do creative work (TV show alled the model railroad apprentice, maybe?  Probably only on U Tube.....) and promote innovation in a....well, innovative..... new way?

[BobRunty]

The one thing that a small operation can do (Craig and Robbman) is innovate, and BLMA did so by reinventing the N scale wheel and truck. Hopefully, Atlas considers this as the assimilate the BLMA product line: because they should not just acquire inventory and half-finished products, but the spirit of innovation should come along too. I (if I were Atlas) would keep the BLMA brand as a separate, high end line of products managed by a small dedicated group of employees.

If I was a bettin' man, I would wager they'll do with BLMA the same as they did when they purchased Branchlines' cars in HO. They'll have periodic releases of the cars under their Master line. I'm still gonna wait to see how the detail parts line fits in with the current Atlas business model.
And again, right now it's all speculation.

Bob

[central.vermont]

So I was just wondering............will the BLMA name carry on under the Atlas licensing?

Jon

[up1950s]

So I was just wondering............will the BLMA name carry on under the Atlas licensing?

Jon

My guess is that it will with the items already in the factories .
 
The new items already drawn up by Craig but yet to be commissioned perhaps both names .
 
Future Atlas designs might give BLMA a nod if Craig agrees .

[peteski]

Peteski .. read it again ..   with "cards"    (biz cards) ..   I re-read it a couple of times as well to catch the point ..

Duh!  I get it now!  My Polish brain is really slowing down.