WBB

That's disappointing to hear. They make a good line of products.

Maybe they can sell the tooling to another mfr to carry on the line.

Bob

The hobby can't afford to lose any more O gauge manufacturers. I recently bought my first-ever Williams model - a very nice Rutland GE 70-tonner. The price was a bargain from forum sponsor TrainWorld in Brooklyn. Bachmann also produces fine On30 engines and rolling-stock.

MELGAR

I have a set of multiple different road name postwar Lionel copies as Williams F units. Just like to look at them on display.  I think they cost me about $100-150 each many years ago.

I suspect many of us could see this on the horizon, but the day of Williams as a low cost alternative, for conventional operators,  may be coming to an end finally, from what Larry told you.  Competing against Lionel,  with its remarkable longevity and brand loyalty is a very challenging lift.  Without K-Line, the less expensive part of the hobby has been really lacking for some time.  MTH has made an apparently successful effort to keep prices down by essentially becoming a skeleton operation with minimal overhead.

I just checked out the 3rd Rail site and they have a locomotive on offer for about $4500.  Makes the new Lionel Big Boy look like a bargain .

So yes, costs are apparently reaching a problematic level for some producers.  In HO and N gauge, rolling stock and locos cost what they used to cost for Lionel products not all that many years back.  Rapido (the high end HO manufacturer of beautifully detailed trains) produces passenger cars for north of $100 each.  Fasten your seat belts.

Not surprising. They fell in value when Bachmann started pricing them like Lionchief. Similar items but without the option of a remote. 20 years ago they were the deal. Solid products with a low list price and even lower street price. Today, not so much.

Pete

On a more optimistic note, one of the forum sponsors has a page of Lionel locos, mostly LionChief I'd guess, for between $200 and $250.  Not chicken feed, but much more affordable than the LionChief + 2.0, Legacy, PS3 locos that are approximately at least twice as expensive.  Actually less expensive than Lionel locos in the 1950s, corrected for inflation and incomes, and more in the range of what old Marx locos sold for. If you shop carefully, you can probably find a LionChief Thomas set for under $200 for your kids, grandkids or yourself. So it's not completely impossible for those with more limited budgets.

I think the coming demise of Williams by Bachmann has been expected and that the writing has been on the wall for some time now.

I've been back in the hobby for 25 years but the new prices are putting me off as to buying new trains. It's not like I don't have enough already. The market dominance of one brand is not a good thing.

MELGAR

Let's hope oil company executives,  hedge fund managers,  pharmaceutical company heads,  and the rest love trains as much as we do

John

Whatever the internal issues are, Williams has kind of been on death's door for a while IMO (and that is all it is). Their original operation, reproducing classic Lionel post war at affordable prices, worked when all there was was conventional operation and post war had become expensive.

When the post war collecting mania died, and you can get post war trains for pretty reasonable prices, part of their reason for existing disappeared. Their attempts at more scale equipment fails because they still are catering to the conventional operator, who more and more is going to be a thing of the past. The lack of any kind of remote operation hurt them, I think fatally. They could have gone the Lionchief route, and used either bluetooth or wifi to connect to their engines with a remote and/or app, and offered at least basic command control if not sound . Given Bachman's other product lines offer DCC, maybe they could have used DCC over wifi or bluetooth to control the engines (would have saved them a ton of development costs doing that). DCC wirelessly has the advantage it won't conflict with DCS, which it does wired.

From the comments made, it seems like Williams by Bachman may be in a quite common situation. Their existing line doesn't generate enough revenue, but they can't justify (in their eyes) spending money on a new line that might attract new buyers with command control, likely feeling they can't get enough new orders to offset the cost of developing it.

Hopefully, someone such as Maynards or RMT can fill the void created by the demise of K-Line and Williams.  There is a need for reasonably priced scale or semi scale trains.  If you think about it, K-Line was succeeding while MTH and Lionel were dominating the market.

Marty

Sounds like a good opportunity for Menards to jump start their foray into locos.......

@RSJB18 posted:

Sounds like a good opportunity for Menards to jump start their foray into locos.......

Well, their initial "beta" models didn't get rave reviews for quality or reliability...

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Well, their initial "beta" models didn't get rave reviews for quality or reliability...

No they didn't John. I have the Beta 1 model too. Not looking to rehash the endless discussion here. Just thinking out loud.

Bob

@bigkid posted:

Whatever the internal issues are, Williams has kind of been on death's door for a while IMO (and that is all it is). Their original operation, reproducing classic Lionel post war at affordable prices, worked when all there was was conventional operation and post war had become expensive.

When the post war collecting mania died, and you can get post war trains for pretty reasonable prices, part of their reason for existing disappeared. Their attempts at more scale equipment fails because they still are catering to the conventional operator, who more and more is going to be a thing of the past. The lack of any kind of remote operation hurt them, I think fatally. They could have gone the Lionchief route, and used either bluetooth or wifi to connect to their engines with a remote and/or app, and offered at least basic command control if not sound . Given Bachman's other product lines offer DCC, maybe they could have used DCC over wifi or bluetooth to control the engines (would have saved them a ton of development costs doing that). DCC wirelessly has the advantage it won't conflict with DCS, which it does wired.

From the comments made, it seems like Williams by Bachman may be in a quite common situation. Their existing line doesn't generate enough revenue, but they can't justify (in their eyes) spending money on a new line that might attract new buyers with command control, likely feeling they can't get enough new orders to offset the cost of developing it.

Best analysis of the wbb problem I've read so far. I hope that bachman hangs on to the wbb tooling because what I foresee happening is that all the fancy electronics in Lionel locomotives will not be repairable and in addition, the electronics will not be available at any price. Add to that, folks that repair these things are not spring chickens. Thus, it is possible that everything old will become new again and conventional running will find favor in another generation.

I've often wondered how many truckloads of WBB engines Trainworld bought.  They've been blowing them out for what seems like a decade or more.  I own several - they're great workhorses, but certainly not showpieces.  The pricing of recent Williams-branded production is a problem - I agree with the previous points regarding them being priced too high for conventional-only operation - I think there would be a viable market in the $150 range for diesels and $200 range for steamers.  I'm also put off by the ridiculously high MSRPs.

Thank goodness for used stuff at train shows.

@Mallard4468 posted:

I think there would be a viable market in the $150 range for diesels and $200 range for steamers.

Thank goodness for used stuff at train shows.

I generally agree but inflation in the last year has been horrendous.

In light of this add 50 bucks to each of your targets. Yes the market would certainly be interested at $150 and $200, but not even Menards, can deliver those prices today, and in that sense it wouldn't be considered "viable".

This makes your last sentence particularly true -- I fully agree with it.

Mike

Train world - I remember they were running a special at York for Williams' scale GG-1s.  I think I bought a few for $120 each.

Great runners!

I bought four of the $120 Williams GG1's, what a deal that was!  I keep hoping they'll repeat it and I can get four more!

Timely post. I went to a TCA show yesterday in search of some parts or, more likely, some low cost engines I could use as spare parts carcasses the Williams engines I own. Dealing with zinc pest on the side frame of an FA2 truck. Could not have been more fortunate.....found a set of Alco with the dummy missing a shell and the matching powered unit for a mere $90. That gives me trucks and other parts for a while. Also found a set of 4 O27 passenger cars for $100.

Sad that we're having to consider salvage and duplicate purchases to protect what we have, just a sign of the times.

I'd really like to see Bachmann invest in the WBB line. Nothing against Lionel, just like to see competition. I was hoping they'd fill the void left by K-Line and now, for the most part, MTH by licensing DCS like Atlas or with their own remote control system. Not holding my breath.