NEWS: MTH Electric Trains to continue producing Premier, Railking and One Gauge trains

GREAT NEWS!!!

Wow. Good news for those who are into DCS.  And great news for those invested in Premier stuff.  I always though Lionel's parts ordering page was pretty decent, they seem to have a good system in place (except for follow-up order confirmations for some odd reason).  Will be interesting to see what platform the MTH parts business is built on.

SURPRISE 🎉

Track, Z4000, Z1000, etc.?  Standard gauge?  Tinplate?  Probably no answers yet, but thought it worth asking.

This is very good news! It’s good to have diversity in a hobby. I hope they continue to make accessories, too.

@Landsteiner posted:

Track, Z4000, Z1000, etc.?  Standard gauge?  Tinplate?  Probably no answers yet, but thought it worth asking.

Z4000's are waiting on circuit boards from an outside vendor.  MTH is taking orders from dealers now for Z1000's for delivery by this winter/holiday.  No news on tinplate or standard gauge.  I believe the minimum quantity to stamp the parts is much higher than the demand.  But with tinplate...Never say never!

And the award for best marketing campaign ever goes to....

Amazing... Massive going out of business sale, wildly successful last chance sales and now...

brilliant!!!

be interesting to see how the new* MTH strategy of no traditional catalogs will work in the long term .

The “last chance to buy uncatalogued item” sales for MTH worked very well. I for one would miss the twice yearly catalog. It allows you to dream, save and plan.

@Madockawando posted:

And the award for best marketing campaign ever goes to....

Amazing... Massive going out of business sale, wildly successful last chance sales and now...

brilliant!!!

Oldest trick in the book. KISS has been doing it for 40 years.

Another thought: just like we have divisions in Lionel production: prewar, postwar, MPC, Modern eras there should be a new era for the new reorganized and truncated MTH.

-Post Mike MTH??

-Elkridge MTH?

- Mini H?

@RickO posted:

Oldest trick in the book. KISS has been doing it for 40 years.

And so did “The Who”!

..................Thanks!

Very good to hear! Wonder what toolings are still in possession with those guys. And of course continued parts production is great to hear too!

Does anyone know who the two employees taking over are? I very wish them well. It’s not easy to start and run a small business.
So...  best of luck and success!

@Madockawando posted:

Another thought: just like we have divisions in Lionel production: prewar, postwar, MPC, Modern eras there should be a new era for the new reorganized and truncated MTH.

-Post Mike MTH??

-Elkridge MTH?

- Mini H?

Who said Mike was out of the picture. I suspect not.

Regardless I wish them the best. They certainly got a good start.

@Madockawando posted:

Does anyone know who the two employees taking over are? I very wish them well. It’s not easy to start and run a small business.
So...  best of luck and success!

Yes, long time employees. Not really starting a new business rather just restructuring an existing business.

Pete

Thanks for the update, very good news indeed!

"Going out of Business Sale?" Gosh, just like our local mattress store.

That's good news. Should be interesting to see if they continue with the track production.

I wonder if we'll see any really NEW products (locomotives) - especially in the RailKing line, or just re-runs of the same old, same old with either new RR names and paint schemes or merely less detailed Premier stuff called whatever?

@Madockawando posted:

And the award for best marketing campaign ever goes to....

Amazing... Massive going out of business sale, wildly successful last chance sales and now...

brilliant!!!

It is my pleasure to award you 10,000 "likes" and the title "Post of the Year" for 2021.

George

Just wondering aloud, if Atlas is building diesel engines will this MTH group focus on steam?

@RickO posted:

Oldest trick in the book. KISS has been doing it for 40 years.

I actually prefer the honesty in Bob Dylan's last formally announced tour:  "The Never Ending World Tour".  He hasn't stopped since except for the  Covid.

really hope the railking line continues especially with steam

Good news as far as I'm concerned.

MELGAR

We have all been played like a fiddle... and we all love every bit of it 😆

@CPF3 posted:

"Going out of Business Sale?" Gosh, just like our local mattress store.

OK . . . everyone raise their hand who has lived near a furniture or mattress store that has an eternal going-out-of-business sale !

Well, at least MTH did actually “lose their lease!” ....😉

Pat

Fantastic news. Rich Foster and Andy Edelman well do a fine job in keeping MTH going. I think, we will see a lot of custom run items for different stores.

Rail King lives on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Ok so whats the warranty situation? Same or different??? Including these "special runs" for various hobby shops and

When can we anticipate new models- locos, freight cars, buildings, etc - and not another decade of same old with new paint schemes?

I didn't read everything Mike or MTH Trains said, BUT if it was directly and specifically advertised as a "Going Out of Business Sale" he could end up facing either a very big fine from the NYS Attorney General and/or be prohibited from doing business (shipping to his resellers) in the State of NY. From the few things i read it appears that MTH didn't directly say he was going out of business per se, but he appears to be skating about 1/4" inside the law.

Reading the path explained above I do not see any deceit in the projected new direction of MTH.

Over the years I have been involved in multiple situations when the principle was going to retire and sell their business only to be unable to find a buyer for the entire operation.   As a subcontractor I went from working with the original owner to working with the new owner who in several cases purchased  a restructured business.

That is when you need to be creative and repackage your remaining product line or service line and still get some form of cash flow.

Select MTH product has a lot of miles left in their offerings.  No mattress sales here, just smart business.   Mike wisely sold off all the lingering novelty and incomplete inventory which would be a hard sell to subsequent buyers, dumped the heavy real estate foot print and left a streamlined operation in place for new owners to be able to promptly supply product and realize cash flow.

Congratulations to Mike and to the crew continuing on.  Thank you for decades of great product and the will to keep at it.

@modeltrainsparts posted:

I didn't read everything Mike or MTH Trains said, BUT if it was directly and specifically advertised as a "Going Out of Business Sale" he could end up facing either a very big fine from the NYS Attorney General and/or be prohibited from doing business (shipping to his resellers) in the State of NY. From the few things i read it appears that MTH didn't directly say he was going out of business per se, but he appears to be skating about 1/4" inside the law.

Everyone bought “last so and so locomotives from MTH” this past year and the belief that MTH was going out of business.  It’s okay, it worked!!

This is exactly what I was hoping to hear with regard to the future production of MTH trains.  Curious as to who bought what of the remainder of  that 20% of tooling that was sold off?

This is very good news for the hobby.  Healthy competition and choices for the consumers (us) will result in a more robust marketplace.

Dale

I'm also hopeful that this news will halt the ridiculous price gouging of second hand MTH items seen over the past year.

I don't feel duped at all.  I was and am still hopeful that Mike will keep the band together in some form (Rich and Andy) and keep making music.  He could still sell off parts but I'd like to see MTH keep making new stuff and it always appeared this could be the direction they were headed.  It seems to me there that various dealers (i.e. Mr. Muffins, Berwyns, Trainworld, Stockyard, Public, etc.) have put a lot of time and deep thought into their new limited runs that they make the new MTH trains really special.  I like that -- feels like high end train club releases.  I know the hobby has always done special runs, but this is now becoming a different version for MTH fans.  Instead of a thick catalog we now get frequent "Special Announcement" emails that can create the same sort of pleasant surprises in our daily inboxes full of a lot of otherwise noise.

Definitely glad to hear this! I don't much care for all the antics that happened since the announcement until today but maybe this was not the original plan.

Regardless, I'm hoping for more good stuff from MTH. Including their smoke units and unique road names.