Hey thanks for you clarification Jim R! Your reply to my post shows you do have some knowledge about what happened. So many times though you do read other comments on the train forums, such as when the OLR product started showing up, that there was a brand new train company, which simply was not the case.
I also am not aware of how long any Lionel products continued being made at the SK facility. I just remember reading one of the industry publications that listed who was and who was not dropped from SK production, and Lionel and Aristo remained on the not dropped list. Obviously in the case of Lionel, they have used differing vendors for production of very high end products versus the rest of their line. I remember Early Light as being one vendor named that was making starter sets and products of the like.
The old saying "you don't know what you got until you lose it" always comes to my mind when I read the love fest comments about K-Line now-a-days. There were many people who didn't give K-Line a chance until all the big blow sales started happening, where folks were gloating about how they got a high-end K-Line locomotive for $250.00. That was a very obvious sign, for those who didn't know, that things were not going well for K-Line. Their debt with SK didn't just happen overnight. What is good for the consumer, is not necessarily good for the train maker. People now admire all the new product from new tooling that K-Line introduced. But you have to have sufficient sales in order to help cover those tooling costs.
As to why these Porters and other products have not shown up as re-issued production, I don't have a solid answer. But as reps from Bachmann have said, higher production costs today are playing into the thinking.
