Just heard this today, but as of May 1 Atlas is going close and shutdown their online model train forums. I guess Atlas no longer wants the expense of running and administrating their online forums.
They have an announcement to that effect on the their forum site. And yes, it’s money.
I never used their forums since they are scale specific, but it’s a sign of the economic times.
[sigh]
Paul
No problem for me. I don’t go there much anyway. Too many guys there who pick fights over nit-picky stuff for my taste.
I dont really go on that forum either. So its not really a big deal to me either.
I guess i will have more time to work on the layouts !
They say that cost of the forums is alot. . They say that money will be spent on more R&D .
Hopefully that means moving production to the USA ! ?
I will miss the Atlas forums.
Wow, I consider that big news.
Before I joined this forum, I spent a fair amount of time on the Atlas forums, and I am still a registered member over there. That is a shame and a somewhat troubling omen.
At one time, I had three LHS within a 15 minute drive of my house where I could get a lot of great advice. Once the last of those three LHS closed, I began to rely more and more on this forum for expertise. Quite frankly, I would be lost at times without this forum. This forum is a constant source of expertise for me.
Nuts, I am getting depressed.
Rich
Typically, R&D means “research and development”. Of new products or processes, generally.
Production will only move to the USA when it becomes cost-effective to do so: Chinese laborers demand higher wages, the cost of shipping to / from China becomes too high, high unemployment in the US drives down wages and increases incentives, some combination of the above, or something no one has foreseen, could do it, but not a company spending more on R&D.
BLI pulled the plug on their forum last year. However, they shut their’s down for different reasons.
It does cost money for the host for servers, storage space, and management.
Tom
They were probably tired of the incessant whining from certain rivet counters over there. Or, they couldn’t take the heat on quality issues from the customers any more (read: newest HO intermodal car set).
I really enjoyed the Atlas forum and hate to see it close. They have good HO products but don’t have a lot of new items that fit my era or my pocket book.
Gale
I’ve never used the Atlas forum so it won’t be missed by me. However, it does make me appreciate what Kalmbach Publishing provides us modelers on this site. I’m very pleased with this forum and consider it one of the best I’ve seen.
Wayne
This is a true pity. The Atlas N-scale Forum was clearly the best, most informative of the alternatives. I for one will miss it.
I never signed up at Atlas but I would occasionally pop over and read through some threads, so I wont really miss it, but anytime you lose a site that has as much info on it as the Atlas forums did it’s always a sad thing.
I can understand how some are disappointed with this news about Atlas. However, there is no reason why this forum can’t pick up the slack…we can be as informative as they were.
Wayne
Atlas had a forum? It won’t be missed here at my house. But I spend less and less time on this sort of thing anyway.
Actually, after the first “discovery” of online forums in general, I have become less interested in them, only spending time on them when I am “trapped” in my home office and unable to escape to the train room or garage to actually do something.
I use Atlas track, buy some of their other products, rolling stock, etc, and hope they do good things with the Branchline rolling stock, but very few of their locos are in my era, so they are not on my radar much for locos - in fact I don’t have even one Atlas loco.
The manufacturer run forums seem to have a few pit falls, so its no surprise to me.
Sheldon
Somewhat the same here. When I first started on forums I went to as many as I could find which was a good many. I even helped create a few then I created my own. A friend of mine rolled his into mine and we ran it jointly for a few years. It’s still going. After a while I got burned out on forums pretty much, I don’t like Twitter and I absolutely despise Facebook. I have an account there but I hardly ever go there. This forum and a few others are the only ones I go to anymore and then usually just to the diner threads and photo fun threads on them. Once in a while I’ll give some advice or answer a question.
To me, this is kind of similar to news that the library in the next town burned to the ground. I never used it, but I feel sorry for those that did, and for the loss of that store of information - some of which may be unique or difficult to replace.
As for farcebook and other social sites, they’ve stopped sending me invitations to join - which has reduced wear on my delete button. And, again in my not very humble opinion, the short form of Twitter is … you guessed it! (just replace the two Es in tweet with an I.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - when not writing novels)
I never really used it, but it did seem like every time I did a search regarding N scale…that’s where Google was leading me.
I checked out the Atlas site a few times. I found that there were a few members who were somewhat offensive in that if any one disgreed with their point of view or opinion they were outraged.
There were also a few members who thought that any brand other than Atlas was not worth buying and you were a fool if you did.
Unfortunately, with the Atlas forum closing they will be looking for a new home.
Should we worry that they may decide to come here?
Crandell