10-19-2009, 05:19 PM
I spoke to one of the owners of Athearn at a trade show in So Cal before they sold out to Horizon. It was right after they started to emphasize the r-t-r line of locomotives. I think it was Geddes, he told me then that they were pretty much dropping the line of blue box locomotives because they had received so much grief and complaints from customers (I won't call them modelers) about how hard it was to install the metal handrails and stanchions on locomotives. He said at the time that the biggest problem they had with the car kits was people who bought a kit and then contacted them because a truck was missing. They trusted that the customer was being honest and always sent out a replacement, but the cost of having someone pull the missing truck out of inventory, package, and mail it was more than the profit that they made on the kit originally. Unfortunately, it isn't China who is going to lose the jobs. As far as I know, the blue box kits were all packaged here in So Cal. at the Athearn factory. I think the parts are all cast here and then shipped off to China for assembly and painting on the r-t-r stuff.