Life Like has been around for over 50 years. back in the 1950’s they did mostly scenery stuff, grass mat and trees, etc.
Up until the late 1980’s both Life Like and Bachmann made low end quality trains. About the same time Life Like came out with a line and called it Proto 2000. I think there first offering was a caboose. Bachmann came out with their top of the line models and they called it Spectrum. Their first offering I think was the BL-2.
For the last 20 years we have seen a major improvement in the quality of model trains in all scales. We have also seen a lot of manufacturers disappear either bought up or just close their doors.
The first Bachman Spectrum was either the GE 44 tonner or the K4 steamer, the GP30 and SD45 were Bachman Plus. The first LL Proto 2000 was the BL-2 (it smashed the continuous running record).
The Walthers Cornerstone Series kits are produced in Denmark by Heljan to this day, (although the packaging only says Made In Denmark now).
I beleive I read somewhere that the guy that did the Magnuson kits, started up DPM Models.
I’m old enough to remember that stuff, but I still prefer to call my Proto 1000 and Proto 2000 stuff ‘Life-Like’. And I’m not ashamed of it either. After all, my best running locos are Life-Like GM switchers. On the bottom of the fuel tanks of all my SWs the Life-Like logo is there to read, plain as day.
Another example is that Rivarossi originally supplied Lionel their HO models. Later Athearn was the supplier. Despite some being virtually identical to their Athearn counterparts, the Lionel models always were valued at a premium.
Later Lionel sold the GS4 and GP-30 that are now in the Bachmann stable.
This is one rare example where plastic HO actually has some collector value. For no other reason than it is Lionel.
It can get confusing, there are some model railroad items that have been manufacturered by several different companies over time - a company closes shop or for other reasons sells off it’s dies to another company who continue to make the same products. Like for example in the eighties Walthers bought Train Miniatures and many of their “new” line of HO freight cars were basically TM cars. As mentioned, Walthers owned Magnusson for many years (as I recall, even with Magnusson was supposed to be a separate company, it’s address was the same as Walther’s.)
Bachmann and Life-Like made toy-train grade HO products until the mid/late eighties when Bachmann shocked most everyone with their “Spectrum” line. It may be hard to believe now, but in 1988-89 the Spectrum K-4 or GP-30 were way way above the level of any plastic model available at the time. Other manufacturers followed suit, Life-Like came out with the “Proto 2000” line of high-quality products, followed by “Proto 1000” which was kinda like Atlas’ current “TrainMan” line - good running products but maybe a little less detailed than the P2K line. A few years ago, Walthers bought Life-Like.
Stewart originally used Athearn motors/drives, which in the 70’s/80’s were considered to be very good. They later got these components from Kato, who only much later began making their own HO models for the US market.
<>A lot of manufacturers farmed out things to other companies. The best running engines of the mid-eighties were probably those using Roco motors and drives, like Walthers and Atlas models. My old Walthers FM H-10-44 is still one of the smoothest slow-speed / good pulling engines I have.
It’s important to remember that not all toy train lines cars are junk. A couple of lines have one or two models that are either fairly good models or just need a bit of work to be good models. Mostly all it takes is stripping, repainting and lettering.