I’ve been unable to find any pictures of a 2006 K-Line catalog. I’ve seen catalogs from 2005 and 2007-2009, but none from 2006. I believe Lionel took over the K-Line name in 2007. Was K-Line in such bad shape they didn’t produce a catalog in 2006?
I thought they offered the best value for money from the late 90s until Lionel took the name over. Even their collectors’ club offered the best values for membership. I really miss seeing their products. They made a lot of improvements and offered a wide range of products. Lionel cheapened the quality expectation of K-Line branded products by only offering their lowest quality products under that name. It was obvious they were going to get rid of the name soon afterward. Now Lionel has more than doubled their prices. K-Line had a line of $19 “Train 19” cars. Now Lionel sells one gondola with 2 canisters for $49.99. A three dome tank car costs the same. I doubt they are newly sculpted cars. If you want a three dome tank car with die-cast sprung trucks, Lionel charges another $25 for a total of $74.99. I rarely buy new Lionel stuff anymore. I get a lot more for my money by buying new old stock Lionel.
There’s a website called legacykline.com that has links for the K-Line catalogs. It only goes to 2005. I would have to look at my Lionel catalogs, but I’m 99% sure 2006 was the first year for K-Line by Lionel. I think that was when my KCC SD75 was produced by Lionel, but the memory is a little fuzzy! I agree. It’s too bad about the demise of K-Line. They were making some fantastic product the early 2000’s like the intermodal cars, scale passenger cars, etc. The detail on my SD75 was second to none at the time.
What Lionel did to K-Line is a cautionary tale for any business. K-Line tried to improve thier offerings by borrowing/licensing technology from Lionel. Somewhere along the way Lionel decided to sue K-Line out of existence by claiming they had used unlicensed technology in thier upscale products.
End result Lionel took K-Line over. The story has a bittersweet ending for Lionel though, courts gave much of the K-Line tooling and product line to other manufacturers. That is how Williams wound up with SUper Streets.
I’m curious, what was the rationale the court used to split up K-Line’s assets? Which assets went where?
(I remember there was a thread here last year where someone mentioned there was a company that had been releasing trains under the name "O Line Reproductions. They had some of the ex-K-Line tooling.)
As for the improvements K-Line made…
I joined their K-Line Collectors’ Club in the mid-90s. There were many articles about improvements they’d made during that period. If memory serves me correctly, many of their tooling was originally made by Marx/Kusan. They’d taken those, and reworked them. K-Line added separately applied ladders, wheels, and undercarriage detail. It was kind of funny that their earlier couplers and gondolas suffered from some basic design problems. Many of their couplers weren’t reliable at all. Some would get stuck. Some would release at unpredictable times. Some were difficult to open and close. After a few design changes, the coupler problem was solved. The gondolas had the trucks attached to the car bodies with studs or rivets that weren’t flush with the payload side. Since K-Line usually supplied crates with their gondolas (as opposed to canisters like Lionel) the base of the crates on the ends couldn’t lie flat in the gondola floor. It was such a silly mistake, but I couldn’t believe their QC department let it through to begin with. (Of course, the tooling from Marx/Kusan may have originated that way.) I remember looking at the gondolas pictured in their catalogs and noticing how they’d balanced the end crates on the studs/rivets against the ends so they would appear level, but slightly higher than the other two inner crates. I did that with my gondolas, but the end crates would quickly get uneven once the train started r
I lucked into a K-Line Hershey set at a flea market several years ago, complete and un-used. Fun set! It comes out of the box at Christmastime and looks great under the tree pulling the “Suger High Express!” (Smoke unit doesn’t work but I can live without it. Here at the "Fortress Firelock trains under the tree are “smoke- off, sound-off,” I just rely on the visuals.) I’ve gotten really lucky and found three K-Line “Ferrara Torrone” gondolas. If you’re of Italian extraction and from the New Jersey/ New York area like I am I’m sure you know what torrone is! Thank you Maury Kline for producing them, a fine monument to a Christmas memory!
It wasn’t up to the court, it was up to Kader, a manufacturer creditor that took possession of most of the tooling and entered into the arrangement with Lionel to sell product that was mostly already made. Kader made product for Aristo/RMT w/ K-Line tooling. My guess would be that Kader was already in talks with Jerry Williams about acquiring his business and was positioning for a slot in the O-gauge market when making decisions on who thay would lease which tooling to leading up to the formation of WBB.
Also the actual straw that broke the camels back as they say was that K-line used a mold belonging to Lionel without there permission, so Lionel sued them and they didn’t have the resources to pay so from what I understand is that Lionel had the option to make K-Line items ( I think for two years ) with the option to continue with a lease option after that if they wish, which they didn’t take up on, so thats what ended the K-Line name as a business selling trains. Now as staded Kader owns the molds now and it appears they have leased/sold them to some other companies. ie RMT
It is all ancient history now, but it was a little more than company B using company A’s tooling. Here are some dates of the stories we ran. Some might still be in the news section of the website.
Lionel accuses K-Line of stealing trade secrets, News & Notes Oct 2005 p23
K-Line seeks bankruptcy protection following Lionel lawsuit, News & Notes, Nov 2005 p23
K-Line/Lionel settlement (Second statement), Product News Feb 2006 p24
Lionel will take over K–Line brand, Product News, May 2006 p23
I met Maury Kline once. The K-Line SuperStore in Carroboro, North Carolina was having a big sale where a lot of one-of-a-kind and limited edition items were being sold. On November 4, 1995, I drove about 4 hours to get there from Newport News, Virginia. Once I got there, I couldn’t believe just how much stuff was on-sale! There was a man who was playing with his daughter by the K-Line layout. I told him I was having a great time going through the stuff on sale. He introduced himself as Maury and his daughter as Ashley (she was about four). We talked for a bit about many of the trains there, and he told me some interesting things about why K-Line trains had released certain things. One of the things I’d picked out (it was either a birthday box car or a container) had “Ashley” on it. He told me he made it for his daughter that he was playing with. He asked her, “Right Ashley?”. She shouted, “Yeah!!!”…as he flipped her. That’s when it dawned on me I’d been talking to Maury KLINE—the MDK in MDK Inc.! No wonder he knew so many interesting tidbits of information about what was for sale. It’s funny, because I thought it had been made for Ashley Furniture’s birthday. I’d wondered why the word “Birthday” had been used rather than “Anniversary” like most stores usually celebrate!
My wife and three kids were with me, so I couldn’t go wild and buy everything. Unfortunately I knew I was on a budget. I figured I could buy a lot of different, unique items or one set. As a seasoned collector of many things, I decided it would be better to buy a lot of unique items. Each unique item is a conversation piece with its own story. Since the prices were so low, I was able to pick out quite a wide variety of stuff. I
Great story! I never met Maury Kline but from what I gathered the man sounded like a class act all the way.
I hope Roger Carp reads your story and files it away for future reference, people do like the human interest parts of the toy train world.
An addendum: I also have to thank Maury for my K-Line Heinz pickle cars, boy how I love pickles!
One of them drove me nuts for a while though. A billboard car, on the side it says “Heinz. Onions-Pickles-Euchered Figs.” What the heck is a “euchered fig?”
Took me years to find out!
Oh, I went looking for those stories Bob referenced in the “News” section but didn’t find them. Just as well, I remember the whole sordid situation pretty well, and at any rate who wants to be reminded of internecine warfare in the toy train business? Sad, and in the end there’s really no winners.
