is not what it once was, particularly once Walthers started dropping the smaller but still valued lines of detail parts and other secondary (to their mind) items. And not having Athearn and Athearn parts in the catalog made it much less of the “single source” it was a few decades ago.
Anyway …
Green River Hobbies in Geneseo IL just had this in their shop email
“FYI, Walthers has decided that the Annual Reference Book (catalog) is going to a 2-year cycle. So the next available catalog will be in Fall 2023. We still have a few of the 2022 catalogs left in stock.”
I don’t know about the first part. Seems other companies have gobbled up a lot of the smaller shops. BUT as I understand it, not having Athearn is not their choice. Horizon Hobbies are the ones that don’t want to list their products in a competitors catalog.
For me, the end of the Walthers’ catalog came when I bought the 2017 edition. It had been steadily going down hill, in not illustrating the products they were selling. I saw a boxcar kit that caught my eye but the catalog entry only contained the railroad’s name, car class on that road, the stock number and, price. I was interested but figured, I better check the class, to see if the car was what I thought it might be. I chased that class to the prototype and, found it was for a car that was way too old for my era. A wad of cash stayed in my pocket.
Another problem relating to the reason I expect an illustrated catalog instead of a stock number or part number listing-0h! Wait. It is illustrated on their website. Or the manufacturer’s website. Folks, I don’t carry a computer everywhere I go. If I have to go to the mfrs. website, I can usually order it from them also. So what good is the catalog? I have Walthers catalogs dating back to 1971, and communicated the foregoing to them. Personally, with most manufacturers/importers having their own websites and selling direct to the consumer, the Walthers catalog will follow the steam locomotive, the caboose, and the X2F coupler
Walthers does not sell Athearn products, wholesale or retail. When Horizon bought Athearn, they made a wise decision to go to single point distribution. All retailers buy Athearn direct from Horizon.
Distributors are almost a dead idea in this business anyway. More and more manufacturers are selling direct to the public and/or are willing to sell to all retailers directly, large or small.
Horizon made that move for several reasons. Athearn prices needed to be stabilized, there were too many “basement dealers”. And Horizon was already a hobby distributor and manufacturer just like Walthers, mainly in R/C planes, cars and boats.
Walthers on the other had hand been giving Athearn less and less “quality of presentation” in the catalog for decades ever since they bought Train Minature and got into the plastic freight car business directly themselves.
I would bet, if the truth was known, Walthers would be happy to be completely out of the business of being a distributor of other brands, and only sell their ow
Do you carry the Walthers catalog everywhere you go?
Why would anyone order from Walthers or the manufacturer and pay MSRP? Order from a retailer and pay street price.
I don’t think I’ve ever ordered something based solely on the small pictures and limited descriptions in the Walthers catalog. I’ve always treated the Walthers catalog (and any catalog) as a guide.
Exactly. I do think one benefit of a printed catalog is that you have an archive of past product available, to kind of take a guess into the future as to what tooling may be re-run someday… but other than that a computer search can direct me to a product I want, where its being sold; and who is selling it… and it opens up markets from overseas if I want to see what is going on there as well… or directs me to secondhand sellers on places like eBay if a product is discontinued… or just to video reviewers who might give me a sense on IF I even actually want the product via them showcasing it on their channels.
I have never owned a Walthers catalog in print, and while I certainly like the sound of the novelty I can see why its high past time for it to fade away.
If I have a specific item from a specific company, then I can go to their website. However, if I want to see what’s available generally, then a catalog with various manufacture’s products is a convenience.
I agree. While catalogs may be old-fashioned, they sure make it easy to just browse page after page to see some products that one may not find by typing in certain searches.
I have a couple of them, one from 2014 and one from 2018 or so. I can see where Sheldon’s collection would be really useful as a reference of what came out when and who made it, so that when things turn up in the used market you could get an idea of what you’d be getting. Or even, find something that isn’t available right now but you could keep an eye out for because, as we know, everything comes back around eventually.
But mainly, it’s nostalgia for me. My dad splurged on the catalog when it cost 5 clams back in the '70s, which was a lot for us. We thumbed it up for years. It was my window onto the vast world of what was possible. Even though I don’t usually buy stuff from it, I get a good feeling all over when I flip through it. Not quite like climbing the rope in gym class in junior high, but pretty close.
1963 Walthers HO catalog and reference manual for model railroaders $1.00.
1967 Walthers HO catalog $1.00.
1969 Walthers HO catalog 120 pages $2.00.
1971 Walthers HO catalog 144 pages $2.00.
The front covers back then were really boring.[zzz]
The old catalogs are somewhat of a History Lesson for the Model Railroad hobby.
Looks like it was hit and mostly miss for me with the catalogs when HO and N-scale was combined to make a catalog thinner then the old HO-scale catalog.
The current catalog is the first one in memory I haven’t bought. I liked having the catalog because it was easier to browse than going on line but I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not buying that much new stuff and when I do, I know exactly what I want and can go right to it.
I saved the 50th and 75th anniversary editions. I found it interesting that the price of like items had for the most part stayed pretty much the same when adjusted for inflation. You can’t really compare locos because the modern locos have so many more features and much finer detail than what was typical back in the 1980s. Those are definitely more expensive when you compare DC to DC.
When I was first in the hobby I bought almost everything from my local hobby shop. I loved going in so I could look at the Walthers catalogue but I didn’t have the money to actually buy one. Then one day when I was in the shop the owner handed my a copy of last year’s catalogue to keep. I was in seventh heaven! I’m sure they got a great return on their donation!
Walthers asked if people still wanted the catalog. The problem has been Walthers has been having a problem off loading them as more and more people go online to search for parts.
There used to be a requirement to be an authorized Walthers Distributor you had to buy so many of the catalogs. And hobby shops had to then unload them.
While fewer and fewer people go to the catalog, there’s a problem:
As a personal shopper it is a LOT easier to page flip and find then go through the website. And it allows my imagination to flow in other areas. I can see by seeing products by 3rd parties which encourages me to build more.
If you go to Walther’s site, it’s mainly focused about presenting their products first and there is no particular order. Before you would have dockside stuff organized together, or steel industry stuff, or town buildings. Now it’s just a mishmashed hodge podge. And then finding competitors offerings is harder. Basically walthers did a google of prioritizing themselves first and making it harder to find competitors. But in the end I will end up buying less.
When I had the catalog in my hand I bought more…a lot more, because I saw more variety, it was better organized, and I found stuff more quickly. The pictures (while costly to print) allowed my imagination to pick out more models which I could order. I mean could you order a Hulettt without seeing it? Or how many varieties of ore/coal cars are there, or box cars? Without seseing it, you just won’t know if it’s right or not for your layout. And cross looking them up online is a pain.
Any way, Walthers sent the email out they are going to restrict the catalog to every other year now.
When I was a teen, the Walther’s catalog was like a Sears & Roebuck catalog: something with lots of stuff that I couldn’t afford but hopefully could someday! I still use my old catalogs as reference but I don’t see myself ever buying another one. I do agree that the catalog was easier to use than the website. I guess I’m old-fashioned in that regard.
I’d like to see a virtual online version of the catalog where you can flip electronic pages, similar to what you can do with MR’s archive issues. I don’t know what the feasibility of such a catalog would be from a cost stand point, but I’d prefer that to the current website. It’s hard to figure out what the right search argument should be for what you are trying to find. You either get no hits or way more than you wanted. If there was an online catalog, once you found what you are looking for, you could then look up the item number on the website to determine availability.
Walthers used to do that with the on-line Monthly Flyer, I recall they used to have a sort of flipping page animation. The pdf version currently on-line is a little duller, but works well enough for me since I can zoom in/out as needed. Hmm, it seems the flyer a few months ago went to a bi-monthly (the ‘every two months’ meaning, not the ‘twice a month’ meaning - no ambiguity what-so-ever with the definition of ‘bi-monthly’ [^o)]) release schedule.
Sentimental nostalgia aside (another gloriously unambiguous word): During last year’s MR archive containment breach, I was able to ascertain among many other things that the first Walthers catalog I owned was the 1977 issue, with the Doodlebug parked at a Revel Station (it looked like one to me). I was 11 when I got it in the fall of '76, and can still recall at the time seeing such a array of model rail items such as rolling stock sturtures, and detail parts that I really hadn’t seen before. Granted the images of details seemed a bit grainy, and lots of the items seemed to be stuck in the 1920s, and the craftsman rolling stock kits seemed to be “heres’s a bunch of wood shapes and sticks, and some wire - have fun carving, sanding, and shaping. Paint, decals, trucks and couplers not included” - yep, that made me appreciate even the crude Tyco, AHM, and LifeLike offerings of the era. Still, the catalog was a blast, and I ended up ordering some Heljan suburban houses and Eko vehicles from it. Gave up on the catalog after they merged the HO and N scales together in 2017 - subtle hint to me that Walthers wasn’t the distributor of everything that it once seemed to be (well, the delisting of Horizon products - read Athearn - a few years back at the time kind of did that as well).