brianel_k-lineguy posted:At one point Paul Graf of Atlas, either on this forum or elsewhere, talked about Sanda Kan dropped many train companies as their manufacturing contractor. Paul said that much of the Atlas tooling/dies were damaged in that time frame and had to be repaired and or refurbished.
At the time he did not specify the Industrial Rail dies, but one could reasonably assume that if other Atlas dies were damaged, it is not out of the question that the IR tooling/dies were also damaged.
So then comes the question, does Atlas want to invest the dollars to repair or refurbish the IR product dies? Can they make back that investment without having to raise the list prices?
If anyone remembers, when United Model Distributors - the creators of the Industrial Rail line - announced they were retiring, HobbyCo picked up the Industrial Rail line and said they were going to continue manufacturing it. What happened was HobbyCo blew out the remaining inventory, which is when the Industrial Rail cars were on sale to the public at $10-15 each.
Also if anyone remembers, there was also a lot grumbling at the time when Atlas purchased the IR dies, about how they had jacked up the prices, which was a totally unfair complaint. The Atlas list price on the IR cars was not out of line with the list prices from UMD. But people were comparing LIST prices to BLOW OUT prices from HobbyCo.
Also remember that when this happened, Jim Weaver was at the helm of Atlas O. And he had big dreams for the product line. It was during his time with the company that Atlas O brought out many new products. His passing along with the production problems that ensued after Atlas (and some 60 other companies) were dropped by Sanda Kan, probably caused some reassessment on the part of Atlas.
Again, I'm just speculating. But if other Atlas dies and tooling were damaged during the Sanda Kan move, it's not unlikely that the IR dies were also affected. So it may very well be that Atlas has deemed it's not financially worthwhile to pursue any more IR investment. But Atlas has made no statement publicly or to me personally concerning the future of the IR line. Given that what little that remains at Atlas proper, is on sale on their website, I'd say the future doesn't look too promising.
Thanks, Brian. Nice succinct summation. This is good enough for me, even if it isn't right from Atlas.
