Bachmann/Williams Rich Janyszek VP Of Sales And Marketing At TrainLand SATURDAY 3/17/2017

Ken, there are fans of the Williams line by Bachmann who have posted here about being discouraged by the gradual diminishing of the WBB lineup and are wondering what the future holds? One could assume (?) that WBB still has access to a good many former K-Line products, again assuming Kader still owns the former K-Line tooling.

Jack Lynch at the past few YORK presentations, has spoke excitedly about the Bluetooth technology gradually coming to the WBB line up, and yet Lionel has now beaten them to that development.

One could speculate that sales have been soft: A company doesn't devote resources to a product line that doesn't make money. That's simple business 101. It would also be just as easy to speculate, that even with existing products, that the lack of road name announcements could be discouraging sales. For example, with the recent 44 ton switcher being available in only a few road names.

It may not be a big audience but there are still conventional operators out there. But possibly their interest isn't translating to sales for WBB.

Anyways, it would be interesting to hear someone from WBB comment on, or address what the future holds for the Williams line up of products.

Just a moment ago, for anyone else who wants to know - someone else asked a similar question on the live stream from TrainWorld. Rich Janyszek answered that there would be some new announcements at the YORK show in a few weeks. He also made mention of the 44 ton switcher and the FP40 that have previously been cataloged.

Ken senior of TrainWorld chimed in emphatically and said that sales were anything but soft for the Williams line, especially on products that have been discontinued. Also mentioning that they buy in bulk and then can pass those savings on to the customer.

Thus far on the live stream, most of the questions though have been about HO scale and then N scale. So it seems pretty easy to guess where the bulk of the train market really is - at least from this limited sampling.

Brian, 

Thanks for asking and then answering. Glad the Williams line is alive and well. It will be nice to hopefully see some variety in current product (new paint schemes) and upcoming products. I like the Williams products and the catalogs have become quite anemic in recent years. 

Any plans for to produce Strasburg Railroad items in any gauge, especially O-gauge or large scale G-gauge? This tourist railroad is well known and would most likely be received favorably by many railroad enthusiasts.

Even though the O scale line may not be as broad as it once was they are focusing in on key items.  The F59 will be in late summer and they will be announcing some new tooling at york for williams. He wont tell me so your guess is as good as mine.  They will make different 44 ton road names down the line.  

I told him to make more Strasburg railroad items too!  In the video he also talks about more EZ App train in other scales. 

KenJrTW posted:

"...I told him to make more Strasburg railroad items too!..."

Thanks, Kenjr. I sure hope they will. A large G-scale Strasburg Railroad set would be especially fantastic!!!

I know that Williams by Bachmann seems to be focused on the major railroads that currently operate, and seem mainly to stay away from railroads that went out of business except for Pennsy and NYC.

I have researched some railroad history for the state of Pennsylvania and was surprised to learn that the Philadelphia and Reading Railways was a very large and prosperous railroad in the late 1890's, might even have been the largest railroad in the USA at the time. Yet Williams by Bachmann don't have anything for the Philadelphia & Reading Railways.

Lee Fritz

It would be nice to see a Strasburg 44t!

Sorry I missed this.

I would have asked for a Chessie GP 30.

Bachmann needs to read the thread on here about the "new" catalog.  Also their own forum on Bachmann's website.  I am a loyal customer of Williams but have not bought their GP30 or 44 Tonner due to the lack of road names that interest me.