Has anybody heard a rumor that Horizon Hobby has also bought
Mdc-Roundhouse? [:(!][:(][V]
Hardly a rumor. mdcroundhouse.com has an announcement concerning it on the top of the front page of their website.
Wayne
Yeah, After I posted, went to the website and saw the dreadful facts.[:(][V]
There is good potential in Horizon acquiring MDC. We’ll all have to wait and see what Horizon does with it.
MDC has been wallowing in a stagnant pool of reruns and repaints of the same old freight cars for a very long time now. i think the Horizon buyout will be a good thing, bringing in new ideas, new people, and more importantly, new money.
I agree that the Horizon buyout of Roundhouse is probably a good thing. Although they’ve been cranking out good things in N scale, their HO line has stagnated badly (I was very surprised when they released a 4-4-0 and the critter!). I’ve always prefered Roundhouse models over Athearn (better tooling, and more useful cabooses and passenger cars), and getting new blood, money and distributing behind the company should revitalize them!
It is sort of odd that both Roundhouse and Athearn, traditional rivals, are now under the same roof!
Actually, MDC/Roundhouse products will now be produce by Athearn at their new location…Horizon will be the distributor…
Comment: I think we will see vast improvements and of course some of the MDC cars as RTR releases since that is where the current market is at…
Both Athearn and MDC were already marketing ready-to-run products made in China, so this buyout will probably have minimal impact on those products; however, Athearn recently opened a new facility that has more production capacity, so they should easily be able to absorb the kit production side of the Roundhouse product line. The big question now is, will the MDC name continue, or will the entire facility be closed and merged into Athearn, resulting in a loss of jobs.
Someone mentioned that they considered Athearn and MDC as competitors, but I don’t know if I would really have considered them competitors since Roundhouse products were not duplicates of what Athearn made. MDC seemed to produce items that no one else did, in unique road names, or that were of a much earlier time frame that what Athearn produces. For example, only MDC made Overton Passenger cars, or decorated rolling stock for the Gorre and Dephetid and Virginia the Truckee.
Athearn and MDC (aka R/H) did not duplicate each other’s work. I think both lines had really settled into the sediment of the passing river of time.
It is my hope that Horizon is a good caretaker and brings these items back to life. There are several out of production kits that I have missed the first time around.
Hopefully Horizon Hobbies will take heed of some of the inputs on this Forum and preserve the best features of both the Athearn and MDC Roundhouse product lines, and not get greedy in the process. I agree that both of these lines compliment one another, and seldom did I have to choose one brand’s version of a prototype over the other. Now if Horizon Hobbies would resurrect the old Train Miniature line (and purchase the tooling still probably held by Walthers), and meld it into their marketing, we could have a good source of hopefuly affordable, and decent products to flesh out our HO rosters. Also, there have been some roadnames like L&N and NC&StL that have been largely ignored in the steam / diesel transition era, by all the plastic freight car makers, that hopefully they will start producing. Doing this would win them lots of open-minded converts, for the general conensus is mostly gloom and doom with the recent Athearn and MDC Roundhouse takeovers.
While some might think Athearn and MDC were competitors, Clarence Menteer and Irv Atearn had breakfast together several times a week. I was privileged to be a guest when I worked for Concor. When MDC converted from metal to plastic kits, they sold Athearn bodies on MDC chassis for a period. Still some of the rarest HO cars ever produced. As I reiterated before, what you will probably see is the staus quo. Production using the existing tooling. I am pretty sure MDC toolmakers were not included in the deal (yes I worked for them too) and much of Athearn tooling was done outside the Athearn facility by outsiders. So new tooling ? Maybe - probably done overseas for RTR Usually overseas tooling is a co-op deal with co-mingled ownership. This means long lead times and only items with a very high probability of good quick sales (read limited run).
Well all model manufacturers are competitors…But,I am sure they are on friendly first name bases.Who knows they may even get together and play golf from time to time…