Current O-gauge equipment guide?

Your quest is for the Holy Grail of model railroading, and you aren't going to be any more successful than Monty Python or the Middle Ages crusaders.  Over the years, price guides (and most agree that the prices listed are useless by the time the guide is published) have been printed for a few select (popular) manufacturers, but that leaves out a lot.  Some manufacturer's catalogs and/or production lists are available either on-line or through E-bay purchases, but a lot are not.

I have, over the last ten years, acquired info on over 40 manufacturers and/or distributors, but most of that is incomplete and includes some info from within that group which is not O gauge.  There are multiple fora that deal with model railroading, and I belong to several of them.  The best you can hope to do is read, learn and save the useful data to a computer for yourself.

Chuck

You can often find old manufactures catalogs at train shows like TCA and current catalogs at hobby shops.

Also try sites like Trainz.com and http://www.tandem-associates.c...ionellocomotives.htm.

In this case Google.com is your friend and you can not always say that.

Charlie

Both MTH and K-Line published a book detailing production in their early years.  MTH went up through year 2000 which leaves the last 20 years.  K-Line's book went up through 1998.  Generally their later catalogs are for sale on ebay.  I have had difficulty trying to fill in the gaps for k-Line production.  MTH, a lot of catalogs out there.  There are sites that list a lot of the Lionel production.  There is not  a one site answer all questions that I know of.

As Chuck pointed out, a comprehensive list of O scale trains is the Holy Grail.

Here are links to sources for the major O gauge manufacturers:

3rd Rail: Catalogs from 2004-2008 and 2011 and 2017 are online.

Atlas:  The web site has an all scales Archive that can be browsed or searched.

K-line:  Catalogs 1999-2005 and a searchable database of products are preserved at LegacyKline.com

MTH:  Their Product Locator is searchable database of all MTH products past and current.  It has advanced search features.  Also Catalogs from 1993 to present are on their web site (for now) .  A few years ago there was a vendor at York in White Hall who sold a CD with a complete inventory of MTH products.  I imagine he scraped the data off of MTH's website.  If anyone has knowledge of this product, please post.

Lionel:  Similar to MTH, they have an Archived Products searchable database.  It uses a very basic "dumb" search.    Be sure to check the Products tab and the Archives tab in the results. Catalogs from 2011 to present are online (2011-2013 are Flash pages - see below).  Here are Catalog Indexes for 2000-2014 where you can quickly scan all the SKUs and product names in individual catalogs. They are accessed by the links labeled "view as HTML" below the catalog names.  The SKU/Names link to each product page.  Many of the Catalogs linked from that page are Flash, so they no longer work.

Addendum: Since Flash no longer works, here are some PDF versions of Lionel Catalogs courtesy of M.H.M. (posting from another thread):

Weaver:  Fortunately The Internet Wayback Machine (archive.org) never forgets.  I have attached 2 spreadsheets  below that Weaver provided documenting its product history:  Ultra Line Production.xls lists 500 Weaver Locomotives and passenger cars (no freight) and Gold Edition.xls lists over 1800 pieces of rolling stock.

Here are links to 11 years of Weaver catalogs from Archive.org (be patient - they load slowly):

  Spring 2004  Fall 2004  Spring 2005  Fall 2005   Spring 2006  Fall 2006  Spring 2007  Fall 2007  Spring 2008 Fall 2008  2009  Fall 2009  Spring 2010  Fall 2010   Spring 2011  Fall 2011  Spring 2012 (attachment)  Fall 2012 (attachment) Spring 2013 Fall 2013  Fall 2014

Williams:  Williams by Bachmann catalogs from 2008 to present as well as a few older Williams catalogs are online.   Also the Parts pages lists most locomotives and some passenger cars and boxcars.

My son (who is a programmer) showed me how in about 30 minutes, he could scrape all the product data from a few of these model train web sites.  Others, notably Lionel, are much more difficult.  I have thought about compiling this "Holy Grail" master list, but there are unresolved issues such as ownership of the data and cost and logistics of making it available to other hobbyists.

Bob Glorioso

Thank you all. At least I have some ideas to start from. And, I will just need to bring a pad and pen to train shows to write down what I see that I life for future reference!

RRDOC

Thank you for posting your extensive list of sources of catalogs and information on most model train manufactures products over the years.  I now know where to go to fill the holes in my stacks of old catalogs.

It would be great if someone would complete the train guides that Greenberg and Doyle did so well for Lionel and Marx for prewar and postwar trains.  For recent times it should include Lionel after 1991 and 2000, MTH, Williams, K-Line and others.  I would be happy with someone just scanning information from catalogs into an on line book for each manufacturer.  It could include just one scan for each item not a scan of the whole catalogs.

Charlie

As others have noted, there is no comprehensive guide to all O gauge manufacturers/production over the past couple of decades, nor is there likely to be one in the near (and perhaps distant) future. It would be a major and very time consuming--not to mention costly--undertaking for any individual or firm. Even if it was strictly an online publication, those same limitations would still hold true. In large part, that is because some manufacturers, in particular, have been very productive since around 1990 or so, and an accurate presentation of what has been made (and items that were supposed to be made, but never actually were) would encompass a huge volume.

My advice, if O gauge is your new interest, would be to decide on the specific roadnames and era you might like to model, and then to research those specific, and presumably more limited, items online on a manufacturer-by-manufacturer basis. That would certainly be a less intimidating approach.

Thank you all!

Ben,

Welcome.

From my experience a pad a pen is a good start, but you'll be graduating quickly to something much larger.

After a good 10 years away from this hobby I wandered back in in 2016 and found myself at an auction in a small town about 2 hours away.  The large collection of a long-time buff was being auctioned off after his passing.  I looked around the room and saw a few people like me, but I noticed mostly what I would call "serious enthusiasts".

A number of these folks were carrying 3" or 4" binders, which turned out to be books holding their wish lists and related details.  One fellow actually had two volumes for his.

Aside from being intimidated, because my list was a mere 8 items long at that point, I decided to find a more modern way to build my version of the binder/set of binders.

On that day, October 29, 2016 I started an electronic version with a single entry, using an application called Evernote.  As of this morning there are now 7125 more entries, and Evernote has come to consider me a 'power user'.  Yet I can access any item in my important items list from my phone, anywhere, and at any time, as well as my laptop.  There is now no need for me to carry any paper whatsoever.

In the middle of this screenshot you'll see a list of 10 of those 7126 entries, a short subset of the entire database.  To the right are the details for one of the 10, the highlighted one, including text and pictures.

Pay careful attention to the list in the black column to the left as it contains a special list of keywords, many more than you can see.  The secret to Evernote is the ability to add keywords to each entry (like most software), but it also carries the relationship between those keywords.  This is very, very powerful for finding things later.

I started this effort to make sure that I'd never forget anything anymore, and I now don't -- as long as I don't forget to enter it.  When I go to a train show, or an auction, or while surfing the web for deals, all I need is my phone.

Good luck with your new effort.  Being organized is helpful.  Whether you use paper or software O Gauge/Scale will bring you many hours, days, weeks, months and years of enjoyment.

Mike

I did a search of the Internet Wayback Machine and found 14 catalogs and a complete listing of Weaver locomotives and rolling stock.  The Weaver catalogs (and products)  were beautiful.  I added them to my compilation of O Gauge manufacturer's products above.  The Internet never forgets!

Bob Glorioso

Sweet!  Bob, you saved the day (or the week, or month, or year, or maybe the decade?)

I've been looking for the Weaver catalogs for ages, and only found three of them up until today.  IWM worked like a charm.  I found 19 in total from 2004 through 2014.  There were only two that I couldn't open (Spring 2012 and Fall 2012).

Thanks for the suggestion.

Mike

Great!

The Internet Wayback Machine is a little awkward to use and some of the catalog links were dead, but it is a great resource if you are persistent.   If you have actual links, post them here and I will add them to my post above.  If not, when I get a chance, I will search for additional catalog years.

Bob

I have the Spring and Fall 2012 Weaver catalogs in PDF.  I have attached them for anybody that wants a copy.

I also downloaded the Weaver Ultra Line Production file from above, but it looks like many items in that list are linked to a group of related pictures.  Any chance those can also be linked here?

Chuck

Thanks Chuck.  You've helped me close out my search.

The page from the Weaver website (from Feb 15, 2015) that IWM pulls up, listing the catalogs, can be found here:

  https://web.archive.org/web/20...dels.com/catpg1.html

It has fully functional links for each catalog except for the two for 2012.  All the pictures are also present.

Mike

Thank you for posting the link to the catalogs. That is super helpful.

If looking at catalog covers, one sheets and other items from manufacturers will help or entertain you try phrankenstign.com and scroll down to the train section.  He has done a pretty good job adding covers to the list.

Great!  Now you've identified another source, but it only provides catalog covers (at least for Weaver).  So much more that I don't have; so much more to find!!  Thanks, Bill.

Chuck

Thanks Chuck and Mike.   I updated my compilation of O Gauge manufacturer's products above.  Now we have a complete set of Weaver Catalogs 2004-2014.  I could not find a live link for Spring and Fall 2012, but fortunately Chuck provided the PDF.

Bob

Since so much progress has been made with the Weaver materials I decided to revisit a more complex question that I had about Lionel catalogs online, between 2000 and 2008.  A number of folks have mentioned in posts over the last few years, on this Forum and others, that Lionel had changed to a new website at some point prior to 2010.  One result of this migration was apparently that catalogs for the years prior to the changeover were no longer accessible.  Having been out of the hobby between 2002 and 2016 I do not recall what earlier version of the site looked like, or how it may have hosted the catalogs.

A little digging over the last few days has provided some answers.   Back in September of 2016 I stumbled across a broken, and oddly-coded, web page that came to me in a Google search.  You can see this page here:

  https://www.lionelsupport.com/products/catalogs/

It turns out to be a partial list of Lionel's post-2000 catalogs hosted online.   Broken and oddly-coded because you enter the page in the middle, and there's no way to scroll up to it's top (the scroll bar won't let you).  Partial because, given what you are able to access, it's still not complete.  Years 2006 and 2007 are missing.

However it is a start for finding the contents of the 2000 to 2008 catalogs because, although everything is not there, you can click on what is there and it will take you to the previously missing catalogs, as long as the year is listed.

Here's the kicker -- what you will see is for 2000 to 2008 are not PDF copies of the actual print catalogs, but web representations of them.  In other words Lionel created a set of web pages, for each of its paper catalogs in that range of years, representing the corresponding catalog's contents so that it could be read using a web browser.  Each of these sets has a cover page, a table of contents, a "Letter from the CEO" page, etc., followed by web pages showing the products that are in that paper catalog, just like the corresponding paper catalog, but formatted for web browsing instead.

On the other hand, what you see for 2009, 2010 and apparently part of 2011 are links to the PDF format files we've become accustom to, and which are accessible elsewhere on the current site.

Lastly, more good news -- using Google's "Site Search" I was able to locate the missing web catalogs for 2006 and 2007.

Here are the missing links:

2006

  Volume 1

  https://www.lionelsupport.com/...05D-B71E34759BC76E19

  Volume 2

  https://www.lionelsupport.com/...5A5-9867DF780CEE5190

2007

  Volume 1

  https://www.lionelsupport.com/...7BB-605AF73EF3FFFDB8

  Volume 2

  https://www.lionelsupport.com/...05D-B71D2ABDCD39E6E7

  K-Line by Lionel Volume 1

  https://www.lionelsupport.com/...A0D-239EF3F064174F26

  K-Line by Lionel Volume 2

  https://www.lionelsupport.com/...05D-B76749AC1290C30D

Be aware that a small number of pictures are missing from the web catalogs, largely in the later years in the sequence 2000-2009.  These are generally not the product pictures that would be so important to each of us, but the ones on the cover page, the welcome page, and the "Guide to Product Features" pages.

Many thanks to @rplst8 for pointing out the availability of, and syntax for, Google Site Search in his post:

  https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...4#154730474064924244

Go at it and have fun!

M.H.M.