I’ve always wondered… do manufacturers of model railroad equipment have to pay a royalty to the railroads for the use of their logos? Or do the railroads just don’t care that model railroaders use them?
That is a very loaded question with along history. Back in the day, ATSF paid Lionel to make models of their F-units. That kind of cooperation is lost on most modern RR’s.
As of today, CSX, UP, and Amtrak all have licensing agreements. NS does not. BNSF, if they have one, is pretty loose about it. I don’t think any Canadian roads do. KCS…I’ve never heard of anyone mentioning them with licensing. That’s all the Class I RR’s. I’ve never heard of a Regional or Short Line have any kind of licensing agreements with anyone (they seem to be happy that they get any publicity at all). There are some very touchy commuter agencies (being gov’t bodies, of course). I hear Metro-North is one of the most sensitive, while I don’t think anyone at the MBTA could care less.
Chessie/CSX raised a big stink in the early 1980’s by trying to limit the use of their logos on all model railroad equipment. At the time, the big names in the hobby appealed to the public, and after a front page article in the New York Times lambasted Chessie/CSX for picking on the little guys, Chessie/CSX backed down and created a simple licensing agreement that’s something like $1 per year that CSX carries on to this day.
UP, around 6 or 7 years ago, at the possible urging of Overland Models/Tower55 (who wanted an exclusive deal), tried to start their own licensing program that was almost ruinious. It involved not only their own logo, but every predecessor and every predecessor’s predecessor all the way back to the pre-Civil War era. It made manufacturers sign up and either give UP around 5% of the model’s cost, or approx. 5% of their entire company’s income (which meant UP would get to look at their books). They also demanded payment for past releases from companies like Microscale Decals. UP also demanded prior approval for all model railroad items using production models only
You might find this link interesting regarding the payment of royalties:
Yes, that was the big nasty lawsuit a couple of years ago, and little MTH won out over the BIG railroad. Their victory was extended to the entire model railroad industry, thus saving us modelers a lot of money in license fees passed on to us by the manufacturers and allowing a lot of road names to be produced by companies who were not anxious to pay license fees on every item they manufactured.