Now did RDA always own the design or did they buy it from ertl, kinda like to know their history, not on their site.
I think that RDA did originate the line .At some point they were involved with ERTL,I don`t know if there was an agreement , sale or a joint thing. Some time after ERTL dropped the building line RDA of Monson Ma. was back on the scene producing the kits.This where they are today.When I have bought on EBAY it seems that the prices are good and includes free shipping.They are the same buildings just not weathered.
Way back RDA did a kit of the NH buzzards Bay tower in resin I guess that is how they started .At some point they came out with plastic buildings ,Iam not sure if that was directly from them or when ERTL came on the scene.
Dyersville, IA is in the northeast corner of the state just straight west of the Missippi River town of Dubuque. The Ertl Toy company has long been associated with Dyersville, and has been making diecast toy farm machinery since forever. As you can tell by this thread, the company has the odd habit of occasionally stepping out into some other branch of the hobby/model industry, flounder around for a few years, and then abandon the whole thing to return to their core business.
But then who am I to criticize? My employer lost bundles trying to break into the snowmobile market a few decades back. (Nothing flounders like a deer in deep snow.)
And yes, Dyersville is also the home of the “Field of Dreams” made famous by the Hollywood film of the same name.
Ertl offered a corn head for a combine, that looks identical to the one that Life-Like (Walthers) used to offer in its Scene Masters line of freight car loads (it has just been discontinued.) This suggests that at least some of the Ertl tooling was bought by Life-Like, not Bachmann.
I got several of the freight cars at low prices when Ertl dumped its unsold HO on the market. The gon and flat were distinctive prototypes not easily available from other sources, if at all. I think I paid between $6 and $9 which is not bad for RTR and rare prototypes, esp the low-side gon.
I don’t mind the pre-weathering as much as some of the above-posters seem to. The rolling quality of the trucks is decidedly subpar. The wheels seem to interfere with some details or the bolster or the floor.
The original prices were high and it seems Ertl was thinking more of its standard market of collectors rather than operators, much less folks who might strip the paint and details off the model and start over. (That might explain the LHS owner who went a bit ballistic when a box was opened – for some collectors that ruins everything!). They were hardly the first successful model company who never quite understood the scale model railroading hobby. Aurora’s brief experiment with N comes to mind. One could argue Lionel never really grasped the HO market well enough to make a go of it.
Dave Nelson