Does any one know if anybody is producing the City Classics building again? I just read the owner Jim Sacco passed and can’t find a website for the company anymore. Usually another company will buy out the dies and manufacture them again.
They have some kind of site under Facebook, and Walthers still lists some of their products. My understanding was that after Jim Sacco passed away, other employees tried to keep the business going. To my knowledge, they never had a dot com website.
I met Jim one day at the Springfield/Amherst train show. He immediately knew me by my screen name, and I’ve always sought him out at shows. I was very sad to see he’d left us. Jim was one of the best of us.
His kits were among the best. I have them prominently displayed on my layout, along with a few in the background I like to leave there as “hidden gems” for viewers to find. I always joked about how Jim’s four-walls-and-a-roof kits were the real essence of model railroading, giving us just enough of a start so that we could add details and make them our own.
I hope we’ll meet again in the big train room in the sky, Jim.
Does anyone know if there are any plans to revive the company or if the line was resurrected under a different name?
Jim Sacco passed away nearly 3 years ago, so it seems that City Classics is no longer in business.
Rich
Yes, I realize that. There had been some discussion of family or employees trying to keep it going and I was wondering if that was a possibility or if the line had been sold and was operating under a different name.
If I had to speculate, even if you have a willing takeover offer, you’re still looking at a potential multi-year delay. It wasn’t like it was GE or something and would have a continuity of operations plan.
That is true. Add to that the complication of settling an estate.
I know that I was surprised to hear of Jim’s passing as I had been conversing with him shortly before I heard the news. I have no idea if he had been sick for a while but if it was sudden it is possible that he didn’t have his affairs in order. There have been many famous people that you would think would know better who died intestate.
I cooresponded with Jim back when I was using some of his structures to kitbash a large cold storage building for my layout.
His Smallman Street Warehouse Kit was a classic unto itself. I kept inquiring about and ordering parts because the architecture was so similar to the cold storage building that I was constructing.
Jim’s curiosity finally got the best of him , and he emailed me to ask what I was doing with all the parts. When I explained my project to him about the mammoth cold storage building, he sent me a whole box of assorted kit parts.
He was s very generous man and a member of the old Kalmbach forum. Web he passed away, I had his name added to the Diner R.I.P. track where it can be seen today.
Rich
Isn’t this the website?:
Bill MacIndoe
Welcome to the forum, macindoe1!
I believe the link you posted is to an out-of-date website. The last copywrite was 2013 and the last reported ‘news’ was for 2013.
I didn’t want to try to order anything, but I’ve got to believe it’s just a website that hasn’t been removed yet. I may be wrong.
Interesting. The old address was cityclassics.biz/index.html
That address now brings up some weird site. PGBET Asgardian Rising - Demo, Pola Gacor, RTP Live Hari Ini
The link you provided looks like the old site. As York1 noted it looks like it was plucked from 2013 but the buttons seem to let you buy. Doing that takes you directly to PayPal so I quickly cancelled that out. If I build up my bravery maybe I’ll try to complete a transaction to see what happens.
My suspicion is that this is a scam.
The dot com he gives spells RIBS.
I did not dare Google the site.
This guy needs to be blocked.
Not sure if a scam or not the phone number listed on there is correct
and I ran the dot com address on scam adviser and it passes just says it’s a old site all else good
wonder if they will answer email ? or the phone it’s still listed
to Cynthia Sacco
and they are on FB but last post was Jan 2022
I was skeptical of that r-I-b-s.com address that the guy posted.
Considering the circumstances,I would not click on it.
Rich
I built only one City Classics kit and I love it. It’s the tallest building in my very compressed town. I always wanted a scene where a train emerged from an alley to cross a downtown street and hold up traffic, the train’s rumbling rippling the surface of the crab bisque in the soup bowls of diners in the cafe on one side and causing flakes of mortar to dislodge from the tall brick building on the other. The 106 East Ohio Street Building filled the bill perfectly (paired with Carol’s Cafe by DPM). I’m sorry to hear the owner passed away.
Very nice work. Gotta love the City Classics kits!
Rich
It’s not just the kits. A while back I had bought a couple of the picture windows to see how they looked. I just got around to installing them and think they are great. Unfortunately there are only a few of the designs still available.
I also have a few packs of window dressings and plan to get some more before they are gone too.
I always felt that City Classics were underappreciated. You could scratch build and kit bash a lot of structures with the kits and individual pieces.
Rich