Just like K-Line, Williams is very much missed. Bachmann destroyed it, just as Lionel destroyed K-Line. Menard's may have bought tooling, but they have major quality control issues. This took a lot of guts to publish. THANK YOU!
In a way, I kinda-sorta understand why Lionel dropped K-Line. In a way they were competing with themselves which doesn't make sense. On the other hand it would have made GREAT sense to have a "budget line" in the catalog rather than mostly high-priced articles. That's what J.L. Cowan would have done. The old Lionel tried to cover as many bases as they could.
‘Williams’ is just the beginning, with money being very tight for most, the cost of this hobby going out of control, and for the most part, the younger generation really don’t want any part of this hobby. I won’t be sad but there will be others that will fall or be bought out. It simply can’t keep going at this rate. 👎
@@xfiles-thetruthisoutthere8038 Agreed. Lionel prices are through the roof for poor quality stuff made in China. Dirt cheap labor costs, super high executive salaries. We get screwed. Buy vintage Lionel, Flyer, Marx. At least they can be repaired at affordable prices.
I've noticed this over the last decade with Bachmann not taking advantage of the fact they now have something that could make them go head-to-head with Lionel and MTH. As an example, with how much they love to tute all the Thomas & Friends products in HO and N, imagine how much of an advantage over Lionel they would have if they made those for the Williams line!
I think in the case of Thomas and Polar express Lionel has that licensing locked up tight.. Bachmann, of course, has the exclusive rights for HO scale Thomas in the USA and, since 2018, in the UK as well (Hornby had the UK rights previously). I think that's one of the reasons that Bachmann went for the Chuggington line instead - but then they announced the O gauge models as "limited edition" from the very beginning! They cut their own throats for future sales with the product. It was a curious move. Why spend the money on new tooling only to announce up front that there would be a single production run?
or offered European prototype in Gauge 0/0-27 since MTH is gone, and could probably even use their tooling, and probably sell it for a bit less, although bachmann has a habit of jacking up prices for OLD models for some reason, that old 0-6-0 ain't worth 100.00, The Roco BR80 0-6-0 is worth it, but of course Roco packs an insane level of detail even in their cheap and older tooling....
I used to sell the original Williams products at my train shop. They were an excellent company to deal with. They had the best wholesale pricing and great service. They offered many special deals to hobby shops. I liked that many of their products at the time were made in the USA. When Bachman/Kader took over all production went to China and the MSRP pricing went way up. I think the Menards products are made by Kader also so that has become more of a focus for them than the Williams line. I do miss Weaver and K-Line they were also great companies. I think the 90’s were definitely a peak era for O trains. I think what would help the hobby would be getting train sets back into retail stores at Christmas time many kids still like trains. This should be a priority for Lionel and MTH, so they can be around for generations to come.
Thanks for the information. There is a definite similarity between many Menards products and Williams tooling, so it would not surprise me if Kader was the supplier.
I don’t know if it is still true but at one time 60% of all model trains were produced by them under contract and by their own brands. Atlas, Marklin, Lionel, Model Power, Walthers, you name it, all had products produced by Kader, they also took over Sanda Kan which was the 2nd largest producer, Hornby and Life-Like were their two biggest clients.
Your suggestion that we get trains back in the stores at Christmas might work if retailers would be willing to demonstrate them as once was done.Today's management is not willing to donate the floor space to do this nor would they be willing to pay someone to demonstrate.
@@robertnielsen2461 Anyone else remember about 15 years ago when Lionel was in Wal-Mart? For 1 year you could buy a Lionel train, T shirts and some other branded merch at Wal-Mart. For some reason it was in the jewelry department, not toys. None of the stores I saw had running display unit out. Some stores had the oval of track set up and the engine and cars on the track but no power. At the start of the season there were huge cardboard signs with the Lionel logo on them and big endcap displays. As items sold the remaining products were moved to a side shelf and all the signs recycled. I don't think they sold that well and did not come back the next year. That will always seem like a missed opportunity to me. I know many will say "Lionel doesn't belong at Wal-Mart". I think having toy trains on shelves in stores where people who are not yet in the hobby can see them is a good thing.
I work at Mario’s Trains in Virginia, we have a really good amount of Williams in stock because the owner, Mario, cleaned out the stock at our major distributors after he caught wind of the brand dwindling. We’re direct with Bachmann. We have been trying for years to get them to resurrect Williams, they really are gems, and they need to be continued, but Bachmann hasn’t shown interest. They just blow us off. Now is the time for Williams to make a comeback, MTH’s health is up in the air, Lionel is price gouging even more, they need to hop on it… but alas, they most likely won’t.
Thanks for your input! It's good to have confirmation from the dealer side. I was in the train retail biz myself for a short while 20+ years ago so I understand the issues with distributors and manufacturers.
Jerry Williams is the sole reason I entered O gauge trains. His simple approach of providing high quality products at reasonable prices attracted me to purchase much of what he was offering. I now run them and take excellent care of them. Bachmann has to realize that offering less while raising prices will NEVER be self-sustaining. They truly dropped the ball. How sad. 😢
Williams were a real nice lower cost option.But several dealers said that Bachman raised the prices so high that the trains just sat in the warehouses. I have a lot of Williams products ,no new Bachman items.Nice video.
Menards is the only company making traditional o gauge trains at cheap prices. Their early stuff seemed to have quality issues but lately I’m really impressed with their stuff. Especially their buildings
Well here we go. I had heard that Bachmann was taking over the Aristo Craft Line in G scale (Polk Hobbies). If what they did with Williams is any indication, I won't hold my breath for new Aristo/Bachmann scale G stuff.
For several consecutive years, I visited the large annual mall display in Dallas (sponsored by the Ronald McDonald House). When I talked to the head honcho, Ban Bywater, who'd been doing it for decades, he made it a point to compliment Williams engines -- FAR, far less maintenance needed over the Lionel locos he'd started out with. Those engines ran a TON of hours each season, so he should know.
In 2021 I purchased 2 Williams GP38 's and a steam locomotive along with 6 rail cars. The quality of the Williams products is outstanding. Actually better Than I ever expected and 33% to 50 % less expensive than Lionel. Thank You for sharing
I don't think that was their intention. I think they did not understand how the Williams line, and 3 rail in general, is very different from the rest of their business. Atlas has also had difficulty penetrating the 3 rail market despite their years of hobby experience (including 2 rail 0 scale).
Thank you for another excellent presentation. I'm pretty new in O Gauge but largely because of your channel and the high cost of modern stuff I decided to add conventional locomotives to my LionChief engines. Now I have 2 old Williams engines and a Weaver and am enjoying it. Don't need all the modern features.
I don't need all the modern features myself and I'm not going to spend the big bucks on something I'll never use, like the sophisticated electronics. On the plus side John there's a fair amount of Williams products still floating around, train shows seem to be the best places to find it. And prices on Lionel post-wars and MPC era products are dropping as well, so that's a good way of getting into three-rail without breaking the bank.
In my adulthood, starting with a large prototypically researched HO fleet and expanding in to traditional 3 rail o gauge I have spent way too much money on trains. Now with my wife pregnant, I have no plans to quit. O gauge is perfect for train education. At 20-50 dollars a car I have collected most of the "accurate" Lionel post-war freight cars with normal paint schemes. That's cheaper than HO is getting. Good conventional engines are 100-200 dollars. I think I paid 70 dollars for an old Lionel drum style K? controller. No idea if it works. I figure 300 dollars would build a good oval starter set on the floor.
I love my old Williams engines and freight cars and passenger cars as well! Most of my Williams product was purchased in the late 90s early 2000s. Just knew it was going to be a matter of time that Bachman would dispense of the Williams line.
Fine video, thanks! It's always been my contention that Bachmann bought Williams and then didn't know what to do with it when they got it. I was and still am a big Williams fan, for a conventional runner like me they were a great value for the money!
Thanks for watching. I agree with your analysis. Scale manufacturers like Bachmann and Atlas don't understand how different the 3rail market is, and Williams and Industrial Rail fall apart under their management.
@@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks You said it! Atlas has annoyed me for years with their on-again, off-again, maybe-maybe-not forays into 3-rail. Dammit, either do or don't do! And I assumed Bachmann bought Williams so they could get into 3-rail to begin with! They should have kept the Williams people on the payroll and left them alone as long as they were making money. Ah, it's too late now. Shucks.
@@tonyclough9844 But Williams and Bachmann were not competitors. Prior to the Williams acquisition, Bachmann had zero presence in the O scale, 3-rail market (only On30 and Plasticville). Under to that scenario, MTH would be the more likely buyer, especially considering Mike Wolf's previous work with Jerry Williams.
Amen brother! There's a lot of businesses that have been wrecked, or nearly wrecked, by holding companies or others who bought a particular business without understanding it. Sears, Howard Johnson, Toys "R" Us, Friendly's, you name it!
Another factor behind the sale was Bachman's purchase of Sanda Kan. Sanda Kan was a Chinese factory that made pretty much all the trains that weren't MTH. The were an OEM for Lionel, Williams, RMT and others. Once Bachman took over they did not want to build product for competitors. I suspect that may have influenced Jerry's decision to sell to Bachman. That way customers (in theory) would still have access to the same high quality product. I like everything about the new Williams by Bachman products but the price. They have come out with some great looking items that will run on O 31 curves. I just wish they hadn't killed off the older products to do it. Menards has been the only bright spot for budget operators in the last 20 years. The loss of K Line, Weaver and near loss of Williams have made it hard to get into the hobby on a budget. BTW does it annoy anyone else that Williams calls their TOFCs "Front Runners"? Actual Front Runners had 1 axel trucks. For all their scale improvements the WBB Front runners don't even look close to the prototype.
When I got back into O gauge I decided to spread the Love by purchasing from Lionel,K-Line and Mth. as i found my collection growing I looked at Williams and purchased a U33. It ran just as well as my other brands. When K-line was absorbed I was angry and refused to buy anymore O guage. Now i am in N scale and most of my O gauge has been given to my Nephews and grear nephews and they still run today
N Scale is a good choice being smaller and slightly cheaper than HO scale. Most of the super prototypical HO rolling stock seems to be made in N as well.
What a shame! I am new to the hobby and own several Williams Diesels. They are amazing. I read that the colors of plastic are not painted on but are somehow infused in the plastic. I spent 44 years in the electrical profession and I am amazed at the quality and sturdiness. As I said I own several and I noticed that the sound board is not up to the quality of the train itself. It was probably sub'ed out. Anyway, how sad. My wife and I lament the passing of so many great companies. Sears, Kmart, Montgomery Ward, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, American leather shoe manufacturing, and now this.
Menards feels like they're coming in to replace Williams in the market. Their freight cars are cool and their F unit is shaping up to be something special. I swear by their track, and want to see them develop a steam locomotive.
This is another great example showing how the gray area in terms of new trains has become almost nonexistent. I happen to have many of the Bachmann catalogs from the early 2010's. Considering the placement of the Williams items within those catalogs, it's almost as if Bachmann had been treating Williams as an afterthought by that point. It seems like a lot of these smaller train companies have a similar story of either the head guy retiring and/or not being able to keep up with the competition. They then sell out to a much larger company that goes in a much different direction that the consumer does not like at all and/or runs it into the ground.
I went to an estate sale a few months back of a big train collector. I saw several brands I have never heard of with original pricing stickers. I couldn't believe the quality and price compared to Lionel and say MTH O gauge. I picked up several goodies and when I got home. I looked up several of the brands. All I found was the same tail explained over and over again. Purchased out and destroyed by larger companies.
My experience with Bachmann is one of the company being a buy-and-throw-away product producer. It carries few or no replacement parts for the products it produces, in my experience.
I'm 65 years old now and way back when I was quite young my grandmother bought me a Lionel train set. I really don't remember much about it and I do not know what happened to it. I've always had an interest in trains and have considered getting another. Just checking the prices at Bachmann has me putting that idea out of my head quick, fast and in a hurry. Apparently Bachmann wants to keep it a very small niche market. Good on them, they can have it.
Try some online retailers for used o gauge. This stuff is getting really cheap. As long as it is 3 rail o gauge Lionel, MTH, K-Line, Atlas, Williams, Weaver it all works together. Track may be the most expensive thing to start running on the floor. Stick with one type of track such as Gargraves or tubular track from Menard's.
Vast majority of my large O scale trains are Williams. This includes a number of the brass locos. While I hate that the Williams line is about dead....I have all I need and what I may want is out there on the 2nd market. I can see Menards looking at the tooling.....their F-9 is GREAT!
Very good information! I mainly collect Lionel, Flyer, Marx, MTH and K-line, but not much Williams items currently. I'll have to start collecting them soon. I think they made great products that sure gave Lionel some good competition. Competition benefits everyone and the manufacturers which help bring new products, innovations, and introduce others into this wonderful hobby. Its a shame Jerry Williams sold it to Bachmann. I would've expected Bachmann to embrace the O gauge market since they are a pretty good competitor with Lionel and the other ongoing manufacturers. IMO they should sell of the brand since it seems they are not into O gauge and want to focus on N, HO, and G scales. Personally I'd love to see the Prewar and Postwar Lionel tooling returned to Lionel LLC, but also sell off the other tooling to other brands like Menards and Atlas, not counting MTH due to its situation currently but if they are willing to take on some tooling then there you have it. However I wish another brand would come up and take over the Williams brand and revive it. We need more brands out there to not only bring out products, but to bring more competition to the market and keep the hobby going strong. What this hobby really needs is more publicity and exposure to mainstream audiences.
Thanks for sharing some really great information where I am there are no hobby shops/Train stores or train shows or swap meets and very seldom you find trains at the thrift stores and antiQ shops. So it's on line and a occasional garage sale when you go out of town. I enjoyed Williams and still have my first Williams set. From the 80's. Glad I am held on to it.. "Happy Rails". GMan
@@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks True. But I prefer the original Williams. Just recently on an online auction the Williams WM F3 ABA went for more than 500.00. Really glad I am holding on to all of them along with the WM smooth side passenger cars they did in the red/white/black. They have gotten expensive now.
Bachmann has been screwing up for decades, They don't listen to their customers or their demands!. Then had to basically get into every scale. Their not even a good a jack of all trades and a master of none. When you spread yourself so thin Quality massively suffers!. Many dealers joke and call them "Batchmann" or "Botchmann" as in low quality crap.. Iv'e even talked to their service and parts dept. employees many many times.. Even in their personel opinions the Co. has bad management, Makes poor decisions, Make stupid items nobody wants, no demand or will buy and don't do a second or third run that does sell good!.. Management don't listen to them either!. When you have your own employees saying their products are crap and going in the wrong direction, Something is dead wrong!.
Two things about Bachman: Back in the 1980's a local Injection molding shop that I did electrical work asked me to go the old Bachman 4 or 5 story factory on Erie Ave in Philly to look at two injection machines. Anyway they purchased both machines & I installed the wiring. This shop made HO guage plastic houses, buildings, figures etc for over 2 years. After 2 years this shop asked for a very modest price Increase to cover increase in raw plastic, labor & power. They wanted this shop to take a price cut. They refused and scum bag Bachman took molds back & shipped them to communist china. While doing electrical work at a hobby shop chain asked them about the great looking trolley cars that had the local SEPTA transportation logo on this accurate trolley that I took everyday in high school. Bachman had stopped a local route 56 trolley that ran on Erie Avenue just outside their front door. Had guys on ladders taking lots of pictures. Hobby shop said they had it so accurate that only 2 or 3 of the hundreds of rivets were missing.Fast forward maybe a year and the company that owned the SEPTA ( South Eastern Pa Transportation Agency ) logo informed Bachman that they would have to pay them a certain amount for every logo they used. Cheap Shake Bachman refused and only place that I saw them for sale after that was at a downtown Septa store.
I was at a train show today and I saw some Williams O Scale Diesel Locomotives before the Bachmann takeover. They were being sold at an extremely great price. I found a diesel locomotive from the 90s for $175 never opened or ran. I really wanted it but unfortunately I couldn’t afford it as I had bought some HO Broadway Limited rolling stock. But someday I may purchase something like that.
Last weekend I saw a boxed Williams by Bachmann 44 tonner (Lionel style) for $100 and an older Williams SD45 in great shape for $135. I might have gone for the SD if I were a bigger Rio Grande fan. Thanks for watching!
Just a hint for those of you who latch onto a Williams twin-motor diesel model. (I've got four.) One thing you'll probably notice is when you put the power to it the engine's probably going to take off like a rocket. It was my only "complaint" but it's an easy fix. Wire the motors in series, out of the box they're wired parallel. Wiring the motor in series is easy and it tames 'em right down, you get good slow running and good control on acceleration. That's what I did.
That is how real diesel electric locomotives and electric multiple unit trains work. When you start up the motors are switched to be in series and the control relays automatically put them in parallel once a certain speed is reached. It is called transition.
Can you do a video on RMT? About a year ago I picked up a Beef set and several Peeps, RMT took over the Beeps from William's at some point and made them a little more detailed, I believe RMT was a subsidiary of the now defunct Aristo-craft
I'll have to add that to my to-do list. Williams sold most of the Kusan "K Series" dies to K-Line circa 1994. They weren't interested in the Beep, which is where RMT came in. The rest is too complicated for the comments section.
It sounds like a terrible thing, but I'll wager Bachmann's overhead was too high to keep the full line. That is the problem with product lines being absorbed by large brands. The size of the company determines their overhead. If Williams products didn't generate the margin or desired ROI they get discontinued. Fantastic history. Thanks for putting that together! Hearing that Mike Wolf got his start working for Williams, it makes you wonder if something like that is even possible today. With costs and regulations in this country, manufacturing startups seem almost impossible to have succeed.
I would concur. The business model and necessary ROI for a small mail-order business is different than that of a multinational corporation. I don't believe Bachmann took this into account when they made the purchase.
From UK - have to be Frank haven't heard of Williams Trains - seem like a very popular brand that seem to go trashed / destroyed completely by another company taking it over; makes me sad to see how the range looks now - almost empty
Wow, K-Line, Weaver, Williams, MTH they are dropping off...I live in an area of about 120,000 people, and I know of only one other 3-rail guy, 40 miles away, and he's selling off his collection. There must be more around, because (alarmingly) people tell me about trains in estate sales, (I never go) but never met any hobbyist that live nearby, and I've been collecting for 35 years. Even my grown kids think the hobby is 'quaint', and Dad's just a little nuts.
Well, we all ARE just a little nuts! ;-) I think everything runs in cycles. I grew up in the 1970s when Lionel MPC (and Williams kits) were the only game in town. Then there was the Second Golden Age of 1995-2010 with Lionel, MTH, Williams, Weaver, RMT, K-Line, Industrial Rail, Atlas O and others. That second age started when K-Line and Williams discovered there was a budget market for old Marx and Kusan tooling. Maybe someone will get ahold of the Williams items and start the Third Wave!
I think your right. Not only for 3 rail O. I also run 2 rail O and HO. I think the era of toy trains and S & O scale model railroading will be gone with Gen X. HO is still healthy and I think will be forever. The only part of the hobby that I see expanding is N scale because it takes much less room and is about the same price as O, Three rail O, and especially , S scale, 2 rail O scale and G scale will mostly be confined modular clubs, starter sets, speciality sets for children (Thomas,etc) and trains for christmas gardens.
@@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks I caught the tail end of the first boom (1960-63) and then welcomed that 2nd one starting about 1995 and dragged 3 young boys thru it until they left home about 2000. In the 80s we hit a lot of 3-rail train shows. It worked, but none of the 3 have continued in the hobby. The only child that even mildly supports it, in deeds with her children, is my sole daughter!
The good old days are gone. K-line,Williams and MTH would have been totally gone if Mike could have sold off all the tooling for MTH. The secondary market is the only real choice for lower priced trains these days. Menards has been a great source for traditional size rolling stock and buildings for new trains as for todays Lionel forget about unless you have deep pockets.
I only have one Williams/Backman item, the little 44 ton switcher. It reminds of the one that ran around town when I was a kid. Lionels and William's 44 ton switchers were way out of scale. I have all the Lionel trains I wanted before William's trains were made. My friends have Williams and like them.
In all honesty, the kind of trains Williams made for a while are a perfect compromise. I prefer the can motors to the AC for running purposes, because they will retain the same or similar speed at voltage drops. They are detailed to a minimal level where it looks nice, but can easily be detailed. The prices are also incredibly reasonable, especially on the aftermarket. I really wish that Menards would offer a conventional control locomotive for like 70 bucks or something. I don't even want sound. I wish Lionel would make conventional only engines again.
I doubt with inflation we will ever see another $70 locomotive (remember when the RMT Beeps were only $49?!). BUT, I'm sure there are plenty of folks who would shell out $175 - $225 for a twin-motored, basic-detailed Trainmaster! But $200 for an Eggliner?!?!?!?!?!
There still is the as you say the Original Lionel. Guess I was not aware of Bachmann getting in there yet along Williams. I may have seen a Williams page or three in the yearly Walthers Catalog. In the past. Good Luck see you at Menards in the Midwest.
I love my Williams trains next to my Weaver trains. The drive trains are so easy to grease and without all the complicated electronics that tend to go up and smoke if you make one bad connection. The circuit boards seem to be a weak point but then I don't want to listen to a railroad crossing sound every 9 seconds at the train circles the layout. When the circuit board starts singing it to itself then you know it's on the way out. I got replacement circuit boards that were older than the ones that were dying in my locomotives. The kids nowadays don't want to have a hobby that's any more involved than picking up a phone.
I have FOUR grandsons who are all "Gamers" because their father (my youngest son) has turned into one. Sad thing is, he was the best modeler of my 3 sons ! And yes, he WAS raised with Lionel trains.
@@burlingtonbill1 I and others have always considered model railroading to be a kind of art form. You do scenery package wiring you put kids together is a very involved hobby that's multifaceted but only train nuts are into trains and you can't turn someone into a train nut. Okay used to be very reasonable in price but they've gone after the same collectible rich bitch Market that Harley-Davidson has and shut out 90% of their Market. Are you still playing with trains if they're only on the cell phone?
When I used to get classic toy trains magazine I would look for the ad from train land in Brooklyn. I have bought a shitload of William's Diesel's for a hundred bucks a pop. Bought shark knows diesels that came with a free B unit. Nice scale size gg1. In my opinion they are the best conventional diesels ever made. I don't need all the electronic garbage. When the circuit boards on my Williams Diesel's die out I will have all the engines hardwired to run on DC only.
Good presentation and analysis. Overlooked is the fact that everything, a favorite product, a corporation, etc. has a life. It grows, flourishes and dies. Other influences like recessions, swiftly changing g customer taste, over saturation of the market can all hasten a decline. Perhaps there will be a rebirth. Till then, there is plenty available on the secondary market at great prices.
That there is! I was at the TCA York PA train show today and purchased a Williams Reading RR five-car passenger set (For the Reading's "King Coal" train) for $150! A great deal at that price, I couldn't pass up!
I was introduced to the hobby by Benz Trainz , am now hooked on MARX tins , and am building a 6"x 12" layout in my garage . Marx...Marx...I love Marx , but not Karl .
I went to little choo choo hobby shop. They are are used to buy on table.There was a conrail dash 8.It was priced at $30.00.At first I thought it was a dummy. But it was powered so I bought it.Runs pretty good pulls pretty good to.Williams also put out a NYC hudson that could be double headed with another hudson.I have a few williams boxcars.One other thing recall the industrial rail cars.Got a few boxcars they where pretty good.Then atlas o brought them and jacked up the price.Looks like people who like trains.Are being priced out and this may lead to going to the used train market.As much as I like trains.Just can not bring my self to pay almost hundred dollars per boxcar.BTW atlas o offers very little o gauge trains.I like this video you pretty much layer it all out.
I recently saw a RU-vid video that talked about corporate mergers and how the corporate culture of the larger purchasing company eventually overwhelms the existing culture. The reason for Bachmann to buy Williams at the time seems obvious. It filled a niche Bachmann lacked, that is, the traditional three rail O gauge market. But after seeing that video and watching this one again, it struck me that this is what Bachmann did to Williams. Bachmann's offerings in N, HO, On30 and even G are scale trains. Accuracy a quality can be debated, especially for lower end starter set products, but the mindset at Bachmann, thier "corporate culture," is one of rivet counting and at least a nod to scale accuracy. Williams DID have scale trains in their brass locomotives, and had introduced some scale sized passenger cars like the 72' heavyweights, but their meat and potatoes were their "traditional " sized replica Lionel offerings. Your video is practically a documentary of Bachmann's corporate culture of expensive scale models with complex electronics slowly swallowing up the Williams corporate culture of offering inexpensive and reliable toy trains.
Your comments HIT HOME !! I have several orignial Williams diesels. They STILL RUN GREAT! Bachmann by Williams line poorer quality in my opinion. No Bachmann direct order Bad Move.
We have had a similar case in Germany and Austria. The German model railroading brand Fleischmann (scale H0 and N, Nuremberg, state of Bavaria, Germany) took Williams role and Roco (same scales, residing in Bergheim, state of Salzburg, Austria) "made the Bachmann". Both landed in the hands of the same investor, Roco some years before the familiy runned company Fleischmann established 1887 in Nuremberg. In 2020 Fleischmann had been shut down and Roco use it as a brand name for its scale N range. Some Fleischmann H0-rolling stock appeared in the Roco catalogue, e.g. an ICE, a German high speed train for passengers. While both companies offered well made models in H0, Roco N (now Fleischmann N by name) is not the same as Fleischmann N from Nuremberg was. And while Fleischmanns H0-items had been ready to run, Rocos H0-items often come with many small parts to add to the model e.g. hand rails or even decals in their freight range. In Europe scale H0 dominates the market of model railroading, followed by scale N. Scales TT (1:120), 0, 1 and "G" are niches compared to H0 and neither Fleischmann nor Roco offered items for these. Scale 00 (1:76) is a thing in Britain operating on the same gauge as H0.
Willams Trains...I have them..to me they are great runners and can they pull the cars..some of the f7 and f3 i added lionel railsounds..they run and not one time had no trouble with them at all .
this sucks as a guy that will possibly remain on a tight budget . both williams and k line would have been the bulk of my collection had they not been killed off by bachmann and lionel
As someone who is new to the hobby and on limited income a high dollar train is out of the question most i can justify is 500.00, yes that will buy a new lionel but only their most in expensive steamer, and thats really rich for my bank account. So a line like williams would have been my go to. I dont know about menards bu looks like ill have to research them and check reviews. Anyhow this channel has helped my get in and stay in this hobby i binged every episode an learned a great deal, thank you!
Boomers have turned the model train hobby into a rich man's hobby. I can't afford much and most of my stuff is old, postwar lionel or marx. No way I paying 500 to 1k for a loco ..
@@ericzerkle5214 Scale, high end models have ALWAYS been expensive. Imagine the relative cost of a Lionel 700E scale Hudson in 1938! The difference between then and now is the abandonment of the low end of the market. Lionel has no conventional control options. Mayan Chief has some great features, and it's lots of fun, but it adds 50 to $75 to the cost of a locomotive right off the bat.
@@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks Well not all of us are retired, rich, boomers. Some of us still have to work for a living. These model train companies are just as bad as Harley Davidson, worshipping the boomer market and ignoring the little guys. I for one, see no future for model trains as the younger crowd is left in the rain. I cannot afford the new stuff, so I buy the cheaper, used lower end stuff.
@@ericzerkle5214 You are correct that new items are expensive, but as I said, the scale detailed and feature-rich trains have ALWAYS been expensive, from the Prewar 700E to the Postwar Electric Set to today's Odyssey system. The difference - and this is where Williams fit in - is the lack of a no-frills, conventional control option.
9:24 Bachmann really needs to bring the Ten wheelers and the former K-Line Pacifics back. *these engines have a high potential to be kitbashed, which i did for my williams by bachmann pacific.* i kitbashed mine into looking like a Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad H-3a Pacific, but with a smaller tender. My friend showed me a kitbashed williams by bachmann ten wheeler recently, and it looked like a completely different engine.
The toy & model train market seems to have been hurting for some time as it is and three rail harkens to the oldest part of the hobby. Locally there seems to be a lot of the old three-rail train products sold at the train shows but not as much action at those tables.
Well, this is just anecdotal, but I saw much more action going on - and more excitement around the display layouts - for the Marx and Lionel trains than HO and N at yesterday's local train show.
Some of that is indirectly tied to how much outside-of-trainshow exposure there is, to the hobby. I was the president of a toy train club (O and S) for 9 years and we made it a constant priority to do at least one exhibition per month. At the outset it was tough to get some of the grizzled vets to welcome new blood and expose their trains to others, but it eventually caught on (sort of). Quite a few of the new adopters were single moms with their kids, a nice surprise.
It's getting harder to find parts for the older Williams trains. The sideframes (for the trucks) for the Trainmasters hasn't been available for years. I keep hoping they bring out the older models again, but it seems to be just wishful thinking.
Many of the Williams engines were copies of the Lionel versions. You can take a chance with some Lionel Trainmaster sideframes to see if they maybe-possibly fit or you can modify them to make them fit.
Personally I like how Bachmann has introduced more scale sized models into the Williams line, they are a much cheaper alternative to the Lionel and MTH equivalents since they don't have command control (assuming you buy from a retailer that does good discounts on Bachmann items). However it is disappointing how they have neglected the traditional market.
It would be fine to justify that position with Bachmann except they haven't added ANY new scale items in the past 4 years. I'm not knocking the quality of the items they have produced - they are solid - it's that they inherited a HUGE catalog of items and have produced very little since 2014.
O is a weird world to begin with you have two scales and two rail types that go with it. Bachman has, in recent years, managed to make actual good locomotives. As before, in N and HO, they were "ha ha toy train" quality. Today I have several N scale Bachman steamer locomotives with sound (econami decoders) and they all run beautifully. Take their 10 wheeler in N, that tiny little 4-6-0 can pull a crazy amount of cars that you wouldn't think otherwise that it could (10-20 40' cars depending if its a hill or flat).
Yes, Bachmann significantly improved their HO and N models beginning in the late 1990s. I think they failed to understand the difference in the O market.
Its a sad commentary on the consolidation of all industries including the train hobby business. I have a variety of older trains including newer ones. I have Tyco, Life-Like, K-Line and now have quite a bit of Lionel and a few Athearn. The Life-Like trains were okay trains and the K-Line units are pretty decent for the time. I have one set that is a licensed set and is worth more than running it so it just sits. I also have a bit of older Bachman and some newer. Bachman products has really deteriorated and a decently priced product is now over priced and cheaply made.
Short story, we had many manufacturers and importers, the majority of whom made trains that were basically toys, but in retrospect, really good toys that could all operate with each other and with scale equipment (at least in HO and N). Then, in the late 80s and especially in the 90s, there was an explosion of RTR powered by the sudden wide availability of low cost OEM manufacturing in China, and all the manufacturers and importers started chasing the same money with detailed models of ever more niche postwar prototypes. This RTR boom basically killed off what was left of traditional kits and US / European manufacturing, and the low end toy stuff basically went away too because everybody was focused on their Spectrum or P2K type product lines. Without the cheap sets, there was nothing for toy stores to carry, so kids weren't entering the regular model railroading scales anymore, and the hobby started graying really fast. Compare a MR magazine from say 1994 to one from 2014 and the sense of boom and bust is amazing. Then Chinese manufacturing stopped being cheap, and prices started shooting up, the aging modelers started taking the big railroad in the sky and the train shows started getting flooded with older 70s-80s Tyco, Life Like, etc. And there you have it, the situation we have now. Bachmann, never the lowest priced of the entry level, is basically the only entry-level product line left. The entire middle of the road is gone, the kits are gone and the US batch producers are gone, domestic mass production is gone and everything is made in China, the high end plastic models have prices that, even inflation adjusted, are comparable to yesterday's brass. But fortunately there is a MASSIVE supply of used equipment and that is basically what today's younger or entry level modelers are relying on. Which is interesting, because it is the very same Tyco, Life-Like, and AHM stuff that I was relying on when I was a kid, except I was buying it new, at the toy store, back then....
Theoretically there should come a point when almost no new models needs to be made of old prototypes as used models get passed down through the resale market. I even have a few paper and wood kits with hoop couplers. Someone put them together beautifully.
My now 27-year-old Son and I had a short swim through model railroading from 2001-2005 What a sad situation where the starter kits all seemed to be Chinese-made crap where the controllers and locomotives had a life expectancy of a fruit fly.
@@burlingtonbill1 We started with the real lower-price working sets to see if it held his interest HO trains Avoiding the Thomas The Tank engine surcharge ... While I can not remember the gauge My Wife JUST🙂 reminded me I did get a $250.00 Lionel Train set he still has for a 5-year-old at Christmas 2000 who was and still is very much into trains. 2001 to 2005 were the years we built our homemade layout. Controller frustration and other things got the best of us. I had a fair share of fun money I could spend but the new controller's prices would require a budget sit down and believe me we'd spent quite a bit on trains already.
It baffles me how something like this hasn’t existed for the UK! The Trix Twin Railway Collectors Association and (now defunct) Wrenn Railways collectors club did similar things to Williams, providing replica components and models for those looking to repair products by Trix Twin and Wrenn (and at a stretch Hornby Dublo, as Wrenn reproduced many of Dublo’s models following the Triang buyout in the 60s), however said replica spares are/were only available to those two collectors groups, never to the average modeller (although probably for the better as Trix Twin and Wrenn are pretty obscure ranges compared to Hornby Dublo and Triang), yet there’s clearly demand for people looking to model with the prewar and postwar UK products, as shown by the lesser known TTR and Wrenn collector groups, so why a UK company dedicated to producing replica components/models of vintage models in the same fashion as Williams is beyond me
Allen Levy of ACE Trains UK has in fact been producing replica models in O Gauge based on Hornby designs. In fact, Allen paid Jerry Williams a nod of appreciation as ACE had largely followed the same business model. Neither Williams nor Levy were fond of overcomplicated electronics in model trains. However to your point the company focuses on O Gauge, not Dublo.
@@kevinlilly4283 True. However I've got all the MTH historically correct models I wanted, now I'm playing with post-wars, MPC, and Kughn Era Lionels. They're very reasonable now. Conventional control of course but that's all I need.
Joshua Lionel Cohen destroyed his competitors with his business tactics , rather than standing on his own quality . Perhaps the die was cast and that's "just business" ... STILL , it's a shame this kind of stuff has to go on .
That's the thing. Bachmann was not destroying competition. They took over a line with established product, customers, and marketing and failed spectacularly at a time when, with the loss of K-Line and Lionel in poor financial shape due to the long litigation with MTH, there was a gaping hole in the market ready for exploitation.
I don't know, they didn't seem to have a problem when Jerry Williams was running the show. His philosophy by the way was "If I don't sell at least 300 of a particular item I drop it from the line." It seems to me that 100 page catalog must have had a lot of good movers.
This tale still makes me feel ill. I have several Williams locomotives, and some rolling stock. I only wish I'd purchased more before Bachmann got their grubby hands on the line and destroyed it. I guess the one good thing is the hope that Jerry Williams got a solid retirement payout for what was then a premiere 0 gauge manufacturing line. One other thing I should mention is the availability of road names. If like me (a fan of the DL&W/Lackawanna), you were looking to add to your roster, the first place to look was K-Line and Williams.
TYCO is outside the scope of this channel as an HO manufacturer, but to answer your question TYCO ceased train production in 1993. It was no longer a profitable line for them
Recently, 2-3 years ago, I was interested in buying some American O-27 trains. I want to pick some good o'l PRR GP9 and Alcos RS and just run them for fun over my living room's carpet, with a basic track plan and some extras in scenery to look like a branch line in the early 1960's. I was expecting basic tinplate around the $200 mark for an engine, what I was ready to buy, and I looked at what was proposed by Lionel and MTH : $500 model engines with lots of electronics I don't want stuffed inside, the opposite of what I was looking for...O-27 was supposed to be more toy-like than usual HO model trains, especially when it comes to price. So, I dropped this idea. Too expensive, too sophisticated, and not all the geeps and RS I wanted to buy available. One customer lost...
@@burlingtonbill1 Huge problem for me : trains shows in France, where I live, don't have American O-27 to sell... And If I have to factorize the price of the airline ticket to go to the US, that would be a little too expensive... So, maybe Ebay, but I have not the patience to do so, and I already have other trains for modelling...
@@MilwaukeeF40C That's what I do. Otherwise, for US models, I buy N scale ones, Kato and Atlas manufactures good to excellent models, and I have a retailer in Germany that provides me those models. If someday I want some O trains, I have found a Czech manufacturer, ETS, that makes the kind of train I want : nice tinplate models I can put in my living room carpet and that are not more expensive than HO trains. As you say, why being complicated ? ETS models have zero electronics onboard, by the way...
The American business ethic: Buy up the competition, shutem down, and you have the only product in town. Seen it time and time again, the only people that suffer are the customers. Right now, train sets for kids start at about $200, and only include junk. The kids get frustrated and back out of the hobby. Back in the 60's sets were cool and kids got excited. Not now....Nascar trains?
We'll, Williams wasn't really competition for Bachmann since they were not yet in the 3 rail market except for the Plasticville line. I think that Bachmann simply didn't understand the difference between the 3 rail market and scale HO and N buyers.
Most all of the regular dc models are truly budget locos, the dcc equipped and spectrum dcc models I’ve ever had that didn’t have sound we’re absolutely horrible. Junky. Never could get them to be solid runners. But I appreciate them because they at least have many ho scale small steam options. Ho manufacturers focus way too much on big boy and heritage diesel reruns. I didn’t know about Williams but looks like they were a heat company
@@MilwaukeeF40C The 1940's Marklin O gauge trains were beautiful, and several companies have made special 3 rail, tinplate European and british trains in limited run in european and prototype.
Menard's certainly seems to "get it" however they do have quality control issues, not 100% of the time but enough to be annoying. And they still haven't taken the plunge into locomotives. There was a false start with a Sante Fe diesel but the quality control issue was pretty obvious on that effort.
Doesn't really address "what went wrong" - basically laments Bachmann's neglect, but really no reasoning behind it. Should really drop the "How" off the title and leave it as a statement.
Good presentation. Since the Pandemic... the over cost of model railroading is almost 30-40% high increase. Very Sad... but that's everything these days. High Priced and Phased out of existence.
I no longer buy Bachmann due to the poor quality and reliability of their products. The last locomotive I bought arrived in a defective condition, I had to buy a replacement front truck to replace the one on the locomotive. I had one that was DCC, the decoder failed, and they replaced it with a refurbished DC unit of a different model, packing the replacement in a jewel case with no packing to prevent movement in the case during shipping, this resulted in broken couplers and a broken shell requiring disassembly to make repairs. The one thing that really rubbed me wrong was the Spectrum Series model I purchased, an N scale Norfolk & Western Class J steam locomotive #611 that was very expensive, that fell completely apart with less than ten hours of run time, this series was supposed to be top of the line, don't waste your money, they are no better than the rest of their products. I do have a couple of the Graham Farish locomotives and cars, these are European models owned by Bachmann but are manufactured in England, these are not commonly found here, you may run across one every now and then. I have limited my purchases to Kato and a few Micro-Train models but no more Bachmann.
When I was a kid I always wondered why Bachmann couldn't just double the size of all their cheap HO items, including engines, cars and buildings and double the price and sell them to us O gauge people. I was a poor 10 year old kid at the time. I guess they didn't have autocad or cnc machining back then. I really like my Williams trains.
Thing is, they basically DID that to get their initial HO diesels, which had a mechanism that was basically a typical N scale drive of the time, scaled up. No universals, split frame enclosing the motor and worms, trucks retained by a pin that also served as shaft for the gear that engaged the worm, whose drive angle varied when the trucks turned.
@@blurryrobot3198 The drive you describe was very common in HO on the 1970s and 1980s (TYCO, Model Power, AHM). In those years if you wanted a decent running HO diesel you had to go with Athearn or Atlas (made by ROCO). Only later did the longitudinal drive become more common.
The HO and N Designs werent great....N gauge cars were always better then HO due to metal wheels..had good luck with them. Bachmann used williams designs for the O gauge line which were simple and reliable...they should shrink those designs down to HO scale haha
@@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks No, the early Bachmann drive WAS a longitudinal drive. It was basically a typical N scale drive, doubled in size. The single power-truck drive came later. The early Bachmann drive was on the first few years of the F9 and GP30, and the Lionel GP30 which was also made by Bachmann. It's unlike anything else used in HO and it's quite heavy. It works OK, but you can't quite get away with the fixed worms in HO like you can in N. Life-Like at the time had a very old-school single truck drive that had a body mounted motor driving one truck thru a plastic universal shaft, "Uni-Drive" it was called. About the only ones at the time with a Lionel-esque single-truck spur gear drive were Tyco and Lima. I think the later Life-Like and Bachmann single-truck drives might have been influenced by Tyco. Life-like's was better, as its gears were not prone to cracking. I still use all this old stuff! I get it cheap at train shows and rebuild it, I've got lots of parts. A lot of these old drives are not bad at all if you clean them up and tune them a little. The open frame motors are particularly handy, because you can easily put in a neodymium magnet and get super power...
Inflating the MSRP of their cheaply made junk is what Botchmann does well. Even today, they’re trying to charge $40+ for a cheap looking covered hopper that I wouldn’t give them $5 for. I despise that company and would never buy anything with the Bachmann name on it.
I'm not knocking the QUALITY of the Williams by Bachmann line, but rather the QUANTITY (or lack thereof) and VARIETY (or lack thereof). As for the MSRP, the items can usually be purchased for far less, but that marketing strategy in the catalog scares off many would-be buyer's. Thanks for watching!
Bachmann simply does not have the resources (eg workforce size) it used to. I think their workforce is less than 10 percent of the size that they once had. Now some of that can be made up for by automation which makes sense given Chinese workers cost a lot more now than say 20 years ago (eg using a 4 color Tampo printer rather than 4 separate single color Tampo printers) but overall if they just are not making a lot of sales/profits (and their parent company Kader which is a HK listed company so the financial results can easily be checked) lost money in 2020, only made a small profit in 2021) they will concentrate resources to whatever is doing best for them eg it might be UK 00 gauge, not USA 0 gauge.
Thanks for the information. Maybe Kader would be open to selling the Williams tooling to raise some cash. Under those circumstances it seems odd for them to put out the Eggliner instead of a tried and true F or GP.
@@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks The Eggliner is probably pretty simple to produce (ie only a small amount of production resources) and secondly I think a lot of people who don't work in manufacturing don't get how much things can take preparation even a re-run. It can be possible some totally not obvious problem could affect them eg if the motors used before were no longer available and not produced in house.
