Atlas acquires Microtrains

[learmoia]

That wasn't the argument.  The argument was that the tooling is going to China, which is untrue.  The initial press release stated the tooling was moving overseas.

And the fact that a MTL tooling and production is not staying in the US under Atlas ownership is what everyone is upset about.....

[Dave V]

I'm usually the optimistic one here (such as the infamous K4 threads) so I'll back off. My concerns regarding the present situation won't just evaporate because I will them to, but at least I wont bother any of you with them anymore.

So I will leave you with this...

If MicroTrains had to be sold, I'm grateful that of all the companies that might have had the means to acquire them, it was Atlas. As I have said in this thread, I believe that Atlas--out of all the bigger companies (Walthers, Athearn, Bachmann, etc.)--is the one most likely to keep the MTL line alive and healthy for the longest time to come, because of its demonstrated commitment to N scale. I recognize no one can make guarantees in business, but I would trust MTL to Atlas long before I would trust it to any of the other big names.

I don't think I did a good enough job articulating that part of my opinion on the matter. I'm not worried because it's Atlas, I'm just worried in general. I might all but write off MTL had it been any other company that bought them.

[Scott Nixon]

"The argument was that the tooling is going to China"

No, the argument was that the tooling was not going to stay in the US.

[Dave V]

Question:  How many former Fox Valley models have be reissued since the Scale-Trains acquisition?  None of the transition-era rolling stock.  I think only the Silverside gondola.  Why is no one upset about that?

<raises hand meekly>I am... Been looking for more B&O wagon top boxcars and Pennsy H30 hoppers since I came back to N scale.

This does sort of demonstrate the source of my worry.

And yes, I know I've said now twice that I'd shut up and I haven't.

[bbussey]

I don't think I did a good enough job articulating that part of my opinion on the matter. I'm not worried because it's Atlas, I'm just worried in general.

That's fair, and a valid concern.

"The argument was that the tooling is going to China"
No, the argument was that the tooling was not going to stay in the US.

No.  The statement was that the tool was not going to stay in the US.  The argument that everyone was wailing and howling about was that the tooling is going to China.  The subsequent statement clarified that the tooling is not going to China.

<raises hand meekly>I am... Been looking for more B&O wagon top boxcars and Pennsy H30 hoppers since I came back to N scale.

Hey, I'm with you on that one regarding the H30.  I was waiting patiently for the gray PRR sk version which was to be in the second release, but FVM got acquired so I made my own.

[N Scale Train Boy]

See the other thread - https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=60318.135

[track1]

<raises hand meekly>I am... Been looking for more B&O wagon top boxcars and Pennsy H30 hoppers since I came back to N scale.

This does sort of demonstrate the source of my worry.

And yes, I know I've said now twice that I'd shut up and I haven't.

There was a portion of FVM's tooling (including acquisitions from Deluxe and Red Cabooose) that was not included in the ScaleTrains sale and instead went to Des Plaines Hobbies, which they sell as Scale America.https://shopfvm.com/ Is it possible those tools ended up there instead?

[samusi01]

Still hoping to see FVM GP60s again... some day... but hope on that front is dwindling. Mostly due to the ACe/GEVO tooling issues ST has had.

[wm3798]

I hear a lot of folks treating this take over with trepidation owing to past experiences that left us all feeling less than fresh.  I hear you, but I don't think there are as many parallels as you would like to imagine.
1.  BLMA, as discussed previously, was a very small upstart, made some nice waves, dabbled in rolling stock, then the entrepreneurial nature of its founder took another direction, and he made the business available.  Atlas thought "what the heck" and bought it, but hasn't really developed plan for utilizing the line.  This was not a deliberate squishing of a bug, it was a bug that wandered into the light, looked interesting, and ended up in the jar of a bug collector.

2.  Life Like was consumed by Walthers primarily for their HO train set market, and evolving hobby quality series of engines and rolling stock, which was largely HO.  The fact that they had bought a bunch of N scale designs was probably little more than an afterthought.  When it became clear that Walthers was going to unload the N tooling, it was logical for Atlas to step in and catch it.  The mechanisms, details, and probably manufacturing facilities were pretty much the same.  When this happened, Micro Trains had dabbled with a couple of locomotive releases based on Life Like mechanisms, so maybe they were interested, but Atlas likely had more resources available to make the deal, and did so perhaps without a solid plan of the next steps.  But there have been next steps taken, with a couple of the old models being retooled and released with new technology.  Are they slower on the output?  I dunno, maybe.

3.  The comparison to the hobby paint racket is totally off base as a comparison.  First, because of the success of limited run production, modelers aren't nearly as pressed to paint their own models these days.  Is there a market for paint?  Sure.  Is it easy to produce small volumes of high VOC paints in hundreds of esoteric colors like Floquil or Scalecoat in today's business environment?  I doubt it.  When Testors took them on, they were a notable brand of hobby quality paint.  When they sold out to Rustoleum, which is itself a subsidiary of a gigantic publicly traded conglomerate, that was the end of that.  Too bad, really, I was hoping for a giant rattle can of Pullman Green or Royal Blue... Whatever assets were left were scrapped and sold off for the next quarterly report.  Completely different from this situation where a family business has bought another family business that's in the same business.

It might be time to bring out the "beating a dead horse" emoji again...  The conversation has turned into a lot of unfounded conjecture, hand wringing and pearl clutching.

Let's see how it plays out, and offer whatever constructive feedback we can to the people who are actually involved in this transaction, and hope for the positive outcome that I believe is more likely than not.  Will it be the same?  No.  Will it be better?  We don't know.  Get back to your workbenches and get something done.

Lee

[Chris333]

On FB there are like 300+ posts and every other one says "China"... crazy.

It is kind of crappy how they were called into a room and told they no longer work here and to clean out their stuff. I think that part could have been done better.

[Dave V]

@wm3798

You may be right. I'm an old man now (which makes you a fossil, LOL) and I've seen a lot of change. Some of it is great, and I'll agree that now is a great time to be a model railroader. In many respects this may be a "second golden era" even if the first golden era is ambiguous and colored by childhood wonder.

But a lot of that change hasn't been good. I don't think we can dismiss that out of hand easily. I know I can't.

And then there's nostalgia. MTL is like that comfort food that mom used to make. Now someone else is going to inherit the recipe. I really hope it's going to be as good as mom makes.

Change. When I was a younger man, I bought into the idea that change was inevitable, that change was inherently good, and that not changing was bad. As the years come on, they go by faster. And whether change itself is actually happening more frequently or not, it feels that way. This hobby we often use as a refuge from the chaos of the times in which we live is also not immune for that same chaos. And that's uncomfortable.

Quick story...stop me if I've told you this one.

I deployed to Iraq early in the war. When I came back, I returned to a headquarters staff, serving as the chief of the commander's action group, a sort of "executive officer" function. One of my more trivial duties involved periodically checking the commander's "suggestion box." You know, that box they put out there that they expect no one's dumb enough to use, but that some people are. Well, one day one of the comments from an Airman was that he was upset that we wore our Class B blues Monday through Wednesday and why couldn't we wear fatigues (BDUs at the time) every day of the week? They were far more comfortable and easier to keep clean after all. Well, I mentioned this comment to the command chief master sergeant with a bit of sarcasm. Just two months before I'd been dodging mortars and rockets 7,000 miles from my wife and baby boy, grateful for any day that came with tolerable temperatures and less shooting. He told me something that stuck with me:

"People have a natural capacity for complaining. And they'll always fill that capacity. You take away the big stuff like getting shot at, 120-degree heat, no working plumbing, etc. and people will complain about stupid stuff like the uniform of the day, the roughness of the toilet paper in the latrine, and so on. It's human nature to complain no matter how good we have it."

That last sentence may well be a recurring theme in every model railroad forum. And I am as guilty as the next man.

[John]

And Kadee comment on the news

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[tehachapifan]

Question:  How many former Fox Valley models have be reissued since the Scale-Trains acquisition?  None of the transition-era rolling stock.  I think only the Silverside gondola.  Why is no one upset about that?...

You make a good point, but one could also argue that your example only adds the perception that MRR acquisitions generally end up with products vanishing.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I think it's important to point out that in these situations these aren't hostile takeovers.

They're likely far closer to bail outs.

So maybe, instead of hating on companies with business models that work, we should be thinking about the reasons why these other companies decide to exit the market.

Does the widespread sense of entitlement and negativity of model railroaders themselves contribute? I can't imagine that it doesn't. I know it's one of the reasons I moved on from the industry.

[mu26aeh]

Something to point out bc im kinda tired of hearing it, is that while Atlas has ( and continues) to fumble the BLMA detail parts, they have run all of the freight cars that they had acquired from BLMA.  If you're going to recoup your investment, are you going to run $8 packs of horns and etchings, or are you going to run $40 freight cars ?