The Walthers Catalog - Model Railroader Magazine

Texas Zephyr

dknelson

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.

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.

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 own brands to retailers and still run their retail website.

People said Horizon would destroy Athearn with the various changes. They were all wrong, Horizon saved Athearn and MDC.

The Walthers catalog was a great reference back in the day when manufacturers were actually interested in having products in stock for people to buy. We all know that has changed, and so has the hobby. 

I'm surprised they plan to keep the catalog at all.

And I have a historical library of them, back into the 70's.......

Sheldon