TT Scale. The Ideal Scale.

So, I unexpectedly received a RailTech catalog from 1996 - I've never seen one before. I actually had no idea that such a company ever existed until a few years ago when I got into trains again. I opened the cover and on the inside read RailTech's address: Ann Arbor Michigan. I grew up in - of all places - Ann Arbor I had just graduated high school in 95 and was a freshman in college in 96......

Just effin wierd how life is sometimes..........

Oh well. Maybe think of it as you narrowly avoided getting fleeced!

Wasn't Railtech going to be TT's saviour ... but it all went pear shaped and he ended up owing folk a lot of money?

Just out of interest. What locos were listed? I have a couple of odd things like an Easycast urethane F7 shell that I am unsure of the provenance of. It's not a Tillig one so far as I can tell. I've heard also of GP shells from the 1960s but not sure they ever made it into production.

Ben

scaro wrote:think of it as you narrowly avoided getting fleeced!

that was my first thought!

scaro wrote:Wasn't Railtech going to be TT's saviour ... but it all went pear shaped and he ended up owing folk a lot of money?

uh huh.

scaro wrote:What locos were listed?

It looks to me like they listed every single tt product ever manufactured by anyone (seriously) as if they were selling it.

If you ever have an hour or so to spare, you can call Larry Sayre and hear it first hand. It really gave TT a black eye when it could least afford it, if he'd had a little more solid business model I think he could have made it work. He got some dealers to buy in, but then didn't (or couldn't) deliver, and it just PO'ed a lot of people that showed some interest. He did want to be the one stop shop for TT, but he made too much noise before he had anything really new to sell. There are rumors of a set of molds to make a US style boiler for a Tillig steam locomotive to convert, but it evidently never made it into any mass production. And he wound up owing a lot of people here and in Europe money, I don't know what percentage they were able to recover but everybody lost something.

areibel wrote: I don't know what percentage they were able to recover but everybody lost something.

Almost everyone, I guess we were the lucky ones ! We discovered Railtech, and TT scale for that matter, at a show in California in '94 I believe, and became dealers. Everything I can remember was straight forward, place an order, and received
it in a month or so. Never did an order not show up, maybe that was because everything we ordered was from BTTB and not
any of the North American items they were promising in the catalogs.

So one positive from a personal point of view is they got me into TT, if it wasn't for them at that particular show with their small layout, I'm not sure I would've ever seen a TT model in my life, sad thought to think about considering how much fun I've had over the years !

@ gabbysuz - was just about to email you - thanks for the catalog And, the new cars are fantastic!!!

Hi Alex,

RailTech had a large booth at the NMRA National Train Show in Madison, WI in 1997. The display included a very nicely done fully scenicked European layout, at least 4x8 in size (though in memory, it seems like it was larger), and the booth fixtures were very professional looking. I'm sure that participating in that show was a very expensive proposition, the cost of which probably contributed to the company's demise. They had quite a bit of US prototype merchandise as well, I remember buying a Star Line plastic boxcar kit and a Kemtron hopper kit at their booth. I wish I could have afforded a few more things at the time, it seems like they also had some brass Kemtron Alco FA sets and RS3's on display as well, and I really wanted at least one each of those, but funds and suitcase space were both limited!

It's a shame, but it just goes to show that no one is going to be able to revive TT scale overnight, not even with a large investment (especially of other peoples funds).

Bill in FL

railtwister wrote:no one is going to be able to revive TT scale overnight, not even with a large investment

I can appreciate RailTech's ambition - I really can. I just don't get the endless belief people have that you can just "shock and awe" reality into being the way you want it be. There are endless saying about these types of things....."Rome wasn't built in a day"...."good things come to those who wait"....."if it looks too good to be true, it is".....etc. There's a reason those sayings exist - someone has tried it before and found out the hard way. I guarantee you that if the A bombs were dropped on Japan at the very beginning of WWII, the outcome would have been very different - Japan would have still had their whole infrastructure and military capability in a healthy state and would have been even more bent on winning the conflict.

Having said all that, it's an easy trap to fall into. I hope if I ever come into a bunch of money, I don't get trigger happy as well....

all that said, if you can upload some scans of pages from the cattledog on the site i'd be mighty pleased.

for example, i honestly have no idea about all the locos offered in TT over the years. there are bound to be things i don't know about and i'd love to. as i said, one of the F shells i have i don't know the origin of ... and that's just one.

ben

Maybe. I was ready to throw our printer/scanner out the window 6 months ago but the wife stopped me. If it will work long enough for me to scan anything, I will.