Wanted to share my latest non phone creation.

[bwanna]

wow, dan. you really hit the mark with your custom special

[Dan/Panther]

Aw Gosh Mam, I'm blushing...
After I saw the picture of Marx/Ameritrains version, I liked mine even more. They just didn't seem to capture the spirit of the original.

D/P

[benhutcherson]

Dan,

You've done a nice job on that one.

New Marx/Ameritrains really had nothing to do with the original Marx, tooling or otherwise. In fact, there was a lawsuit a few years ago that shut them down.

What survived of the original Marx train tooling was bought by Maury D. Kline, who went on to form K-line. K-line built their business using the old Marx tooling, but came up with a lot on their own. Unfortunately, a few years ago, they were caught up in an intellectual property lawsuit with Lionel, and are no longer in business.

All of the K-line tooling, which included some original Marx tooling(although not much-a lot of it had worn out) is now owned by Sanda Kan in Korea. Lionel has a contractual agreement to use it, and makes trains under the "Lionel by K-line" name. They've mostly been using the more recent K-line products, though, and not the old Marx stuff.

[Dan/Panther]

Ben;
Thanks for the correct info. I was told the story about Marx?Ameritrain by another collecxtor, it sounded reasonable.
Me being A Staunch MARXIST ....It kinda bugs me that Lionel has taken over Marx basically through The Korean Company.

D/P

[benhutcherson]

Dan,

Although I myself am a Lionel fan, I really hated to see K-line go. They made a whole bunch of great pieces, on par detail wise with the best from anyone else, at the end of their career and for much more reasonable prices than anyone else made.

Unfortunately, they dug their own grave. They were accused of misappropriating technology which was the intellectual property of Lionel. All of this fell back on a single engineer-Bob Grubba-who had worked for Lionel before working for K-line. Interestingly enough, before his time at Lionel, Grubba had worked for the other big train company, Mike's Train House(MTH), and his name came up several times in a lawsuit between MTH and Lionel.

Anyway, Lionel took K-line to court, and they reached an agreeable settlement that would have allowed K-line to continue operating. Within a few hours of the lawsuit, K-line issued a press release to the two major O-gauge train publications-Classic Toy Trains and O Gauge Railroading Magazine, both of whom promptly posted it on their respective forums.

Unfortunately, the press release was substantially incorrect on several major accounts, which really both Lionel's attorneys and the judge mad. Thus, the settlement was reversed, the judge came down hard on K-line, and forced them into bankruptcy. Sanda Kan had been handling all of their production, and as such were the largest secured creditor, and ended up with most of their assets. Lionel came in #2 in the bankruptcy settlement, and thus were given the exclusive licensing and contract.

That's the long, sordid affair. There have been a lot of legal battles in the world of O-gauge trains in the past several years.

[Dan/Panther]

Maybe they'll get around to me sooner or later, maybe I should be very careful how I word my ebay ads.
D/P