Hey hows every one doin, you know I just wanted to let people know or at least suggest that people should stay a way from Overland Limeted and there side company Tower 55. Some might say that theres nothing better than a brass locomotive, and while you might some times get a little better detail on your Locomotives, usually dycast is comperable if not better than overland limited products. Ive also noticed that companies like Athearn, atlas and Kato make high quality, highly detailed equippment with smother Drives. And considering the money you will save on dycast Power it will end up costing you way less to improve the drive of an athearn ready to run locomotives which often times have realy awsome details.
Another reason to stay away from Overland/Tower55 is because there qualitie is losing ground to dycast manurfacturers, and they know it thats why they go out and copywrite all new Locomotive manurfacturing in the hobbie industries, which should totally be Ileagle, I mean a company in the Plastic model cars could never get a way with copywriting/ getting exclusive rights to the 57 chevy. no one in the industry would go for it.
So Join me and never buy Overland Products or Tower55 products untill they give up the exclusive wrights to making models of Locomotives.
This is your first post so I think you have an “axe to grind” and may be a competitor. This is not the place for it. As I have said in the past; Model Railroad manufacturers are not huge corportations like GM and Ford. Bad mouthing a model railroad manufacturer on these forums, or else where, could negatively affect their company.
Please “think” before you post and leave your gripes off of this forum.
I’m not going to black-list any mfgr’s over someone’s poorly written gripe on a interenet forum. Frankly, I can’t tell exactly what your complaint is in the first place. My opinion would be you joined just to make trouble, and hopefully, won’t get the satisfaction.
I like both manufacturers and will continue to support them as I do many others. I buy what I like to run on my layout. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion I guess but this seems to be unfounded and personal.
I don’t have any interest in their product anyway, so the suggestion is lost on me. HOwever, I do agree with the last two posters who suggest that your approach is not going to win you many converts. It is combative to start your history on a new forum trying to rally the troops around a dubious cause…and a bit arrogant, if I may say so.
Most people introduce themselves, and try to get a feel for what the politics is in a group before they wade in and try to tell a room full of Bulls fans that the Colts are the best team on the planet.
People still ticked off about colts move from baltimore, as for bad coumpanys or products, havn’t seen a company yet who has been in buisness a long time without a lemon, their product looks fine but I would have to own one to coment on their running abilitys.
I ought to stay out of this; I am an N-Scaler and I guess that Overland still manufactures N-Scale lokes (which are beyond my budget) and I understand that they are (eventually) going to bring out N-Scale lokes in Tower 55 - they’ll be cheaper and I’ll at least take a look at them.
But, kaseyjones, I’m not meaning to be hateful but I had to read your post four times to get past your p-poor spelling; I thought you were writing in Swahili for awhile there. Finally, however, I began to comprehend the logic of your post and I only have one thing to say; “HUH???” I not only had a difficult time reading it; I couldn’t agree with you more if I were able to understand it.
Actually, Overland doesn’t have exclusive rights to make models. They have a license to produce the modeled image of a locomotive. Athearn, Atlas and kato, Walthers/Lifelike can also produce the same models if they so choose. It’s a matter of will the models sell for the other manufactures. Also, learn to spell
Actually, Overland doesn’t have exclusive rights to make models. They have a license to produce the modeled image of a locomotive. Athearn, Atlas and kato, Walthers/Lifelike can also produce the same models if they so choose. It’s a matter of will the models sell for the other manufactures. Also, learn to spell
Actually, Overland doesn’t have exclusive rights to make models. They have a license to produce the modeled image of a locomotive. Athearn, Atlas and kato, Walthers/Lifelike can also produce the same models if they so choose. It’s a matter of will the models sell for the other manufactures. Also, learn to spell
Actually, Overland doesn’t have exclusive rights to make models. They have a license to produce the modeled image of a locomotive. Athearn, Atlas and kato, Walthers/Lifelike can also produce the same models if they so choose. It’s a matter of will the models sell for the other manufactures. Also, learn to spell
Next year try to stay awake in English class. And maybe you could learn the differences between there, their and they’re. At least that would be a start.
If you are talking about Overland Models run by Brian Marsh, they are one of the best companies out there today for us who buy brass and now they are starting to import plastic under the Tower 55 name. They have some initial problems, but they will fix them and stand behind their products.
Guess what. You don’t have to buy anything from them and they will still do OK selling to us who want great products. Some of the best detailed and the highest quality brass has been imported by Overland Models and the market is very soft on brass today.
The model railroad brass importers have been going out of business fairly often lately and it has been hard for some of these small companies to stay in business. Just because they got the license to make a product exclusively is no reason for us not to buy it. If every company in the HO market made the same items, no one would make money and you would end up with nothing in the end. Not one company would continue if they do not turn a profit.
Challenger Models went out of business just a few months ago and I did manage to get one of their fine locomotives, but they are gone now because they could not corner any market. If Brian Marsh is smart and gets the deal, we should be glad someone is actually making the models. We waited almost twenty years for the first plastic SD40-2 because Athearn, Kato and Atlas were probably waiting for someone to step out and take a chance. At least, Tower 55 has made these new units available and I for one am glad. If you want to wait twenty years to buy one, so be it, but don’t ask us to wait.
The railroads and railroad equipment manufacturers themselves are in charge of the licensing agreements and OMI/Tower 55 just pays them what they request… Thus far the only “exclusive” item that OMI has produced was the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic SD70M sets which had to be licenced through Union Pacific, Coke, Chevy, and the US Olympic Committee (the latter of which doesn’t allow anything to be produced after those Olympics are over and requires all stock on hand a year later to be destroyed) and which required fees in excess of 20% of the revenue… Any of the other products done by OMI or Tower 55 could be done by any other manufacturer willing to pay the licensing fees (to UP, GE, EMD, BNSF, CSX, etc…) to do them…
The best case of an “exclusive” license in HO models is actually that of Walthers who owns the exclusive rights to the Amtrak phase V paint scheme. OMI even had to pay Walthers fees to do their latest run of units in that scheme…
So if you think all of the licensing is due to Tower 55 and OMI, then you are quite mistaken…
Curt Mc (same Curt Mc as posts on the Atlas forum)
From what I have been reading on the NCE DCC Yahoo group, Tower 55 Locos are indeed lemons and until they issue a recall, I would stay away from them like they had the Bird Flu.
Most of them won’t program in DCC, some of them were not even finished being assembled and had decoders loose in the shells and now I have been reading that the sound cuts out on them and turns off on throttle 0.
I would be pretty mad if i had forked out $300 for them. It’s sad that a historically great “Brass” company enters the “plastic” market with results like this!