Mike Wolf CEO Of MTH Trains Showing You His Factory From China On Facebook Live! Wednesday Night 9:00PM EST

How great is that ?

Mike's always coming up with something great and better. Thanks folks at Trainworld for this link.

You got it! 

Mike Wolf wanted everyone to know that "He will be giving everyone a factory tour to see different processes behind the scenes to see how MTH model trains are made!" So tune in!

Cool, I will be tuned in....

Gary

Interesting. I wonder if Mike will tell how many clear coat he puts on his locos?

Can someone ask what Amtrak Phase IV blue looks like?

Will the PS3 steam "no coasting" issue in conventional operation be fixed? This is the software issue MTH claims to know about that affects new production PS3 diesels with the smoke ON (but not off) and PS3 steam at all times. They just lock right up instead of gentle, smooth coasting stops typical of the earliest PS3 and PS2 products. This is conventional only. 

Any possible production changes to the wireless drawbar - i.e. a better design? 

This should be a neat event!

Tell Mike to hold his phone HORIZONTALLY when he does this! Otherwise you get "Vertical Video" which does not fill the screen...as in your test.

This is a one-of-a-kind event!  Mats off to MTH!  How cool will this be!

If I can make time I'll give it a look. I really don't have much in the way of MTH, but what I do have I have enjoyed. Maybe they will show a bunch of steamers being made.

<------BIG STEAM FAN, of course.

Just curious.....After reading the original post from Trainworld, I am led to believe that the factory in China is owned by Mike Wolf. Can Americans own a factory in China? If so, why do we have delays on product delivery. Do American owners have any control over workers,QC, time frame of deliveries.

jini5 posted:

Just curious.....After reading the original post from Trainworld, I am led to believe that the factory in China is owned by Mike Wolf. Can Americans own a factory in China? If so, why do we have delays on product delivery. Do American owners have any control over workers,QC, time frame of deliveries.

Don't ask us,,,,,,ask Mike Wolf!

gonna be fun! mfg participation promotes good consumer relations

Sorry for the confusion just want to clarify, he does not own the factory.  When I say his factory I mean that his tooling is in the factory.  Mike uses many different factories.  Some specialize in different things/scales.  The only person/manufacturer that I know who owns a factory in China is Rene Wilfer of PIKO. 

We will try to answer as many questions as we can and will only answer questions that pertain and are in accordance of the tour.  This is a highly anticipated event so we apologize if we cant get to everyones questions. We will hold more events where you can ask him will you build this or can we change that.  But for now he just wants to try to squeeze in as much factory talk/tour as he can. 

Mike and I are really excited to give you an inside view into the production process for trains. He will be walking you through step by step and showing you things no one has ever seen before. 
So make sure you grab some popcorn and tune in!

Requires Flash Player.

In other words no iPad, iPhone, etc.

Nice. I hope they recorded it so we can see it on our computers sometime. I assume that would work?

"On A Slow Boat from China"

Hi Mike & Ken / Cool / Very interesting tour........

Gary

Farmer_Bill posted:

Requires Flash Player.

In other words no iPad, iPhone, etc.

 

 watched/watching on my iPhone 6....and my iPad 2 sees it as well.

We FB Live a lot from band events from our iphones.

Watched the live feed. Interesting discussion on trains and how Mike has been manufacturing since 1985with many of the same factories. 

Like the announcement that Mike made:   MTH is going to have a professional videographer. Make a How to Use the MTH - DCS WiFi System Video. Like the OGR video about DCS.

Great news for the end user and hobby shops can use to teach, MTH • DCS - WiFi  

Gary

Awesome guys, I truly hope you do keep doing these. Thank you for your time and effort!

Factories are not owned by Mike Wolf or MTH, They are essentially business partners with a business partner relationship. The factory employees the people and they are assigned to build MTH products. Their are quite a few subcontractors in the process as well. 

Great job.  Learned a lot.  Thanks Mike and Trainworld for putting this together. 

GHD posted:

Nice. I hope they recorded it so we can see it on our computers sometime. I assume that would work?

They said it will be on Youtube.

Thanks everyone!  Mike and I were really excited and happy with how this went. I still can't believe the amount of work that goes into these trains.  Stay tuned for more upcoming live events. 

KENJRTW and MTH - a big THANK YOU - it was very interesting and I look forward to future installments.  I, as many others, appreciate both of your time and efforts in on producing it.  Makes buyers more appreciative of what goes into he making of our trains and the costs involved. Yea, wages may be low in China. etc., but there is a lot of it!

Interesting! 

Thank you for posting the video ....  great view into the world of modern day model train production on a big scale.  Rare opportunity to see all the steps , people, talent,  tooling , etc to put together toy trains .  The video has a fun raw edge ... but perhaps another visit in the future with a better quality camera and stabilizer to better document the factory tour.

Cheers Carey  

Cool video and very insightful. I would like to see more and possibly another live interview with other O manufacturers too. Makes me more appreciative for the products with all that effort with their team and sub-contractors.

Just some side comments, but I got a good laugh at the beginning portion when I saw the guy making the frames of the die-cast tenders wearing house slippers instead of shoes. I'm not surprised since it's China and all but the slippers did stick out from it being a bright color. Also got a good laugh when they said have a huge amount of molds and tooling at all the factories stored on an Excel spreadsheet for inventory. The IT professional side of me hopes that's some joke and they use a SQL database of some sort or at least MS Access to really inventory it. 

Mike & Ken, thanks so much for making this available to us. It was an incredible insight on just how our trains are manufactured. It really opened our eyes as to the step by step detailed stages to the finished product.

Well done!

I wasn't able to watch it last night. I hope a recording will be posted on YouTube or some other public site.

C W Burfle posted:

I wasn't able to watch it last night. I hope a recording will be posted on YouTube or some other public site.

See Ken's / Trainworld's post above.  It already is posted on You Tube.

There's a small handful of us on here who already have some idea what goes into the manufacturing of these train products. But the live video stream REALLY brought it home. So often one can read comments here how some assume the process is akin to ordering a cup of coffee at the drive thru. I remember reading one comment here that "it should be easy to just change the tooling." Uh, NO it's not easy... and it's also expensive!

The O Gauge Railroading article years ago by Fred Boyle called  "A Visit To Sanda Kan" covered the whole process, making mention that even the paint masks are expensive. Yet seeing is believing and this presentation by Mike Wolf and Trainworld/Trainland really brought it home on an another level. It's my hope that more people will go back and watch this video to see for themselves that the whole process of manufacturing trains is nothing like getting the burger made your way. Several times during the livestream, even Ken Bianco himself commented that he couldn't believe how complicated the whole process is.

Maybe I'm thinking overly optimistically in this entitlement culture that America has become. At the end of the stream last night, some one asked the question, why does MTH cancel products? The answer was and is as obvious as asking would you go to work knowing you will not receive a paycheck.

Watching the live stream and seeing the massive amounts of tooling, the whole process and then hearing Mike talk about the small quantities MTH manufactures makes me wonder how these train companies even stay in business, never mind make any profits. Especially in an ever more demanding existing 3-rail market that seems to be getting smaller, not bigger.

There are many folks who could stand to benefit from watching the stream before making their "wish list" requests for products requiring totally new tooling, which also stand little chance of selling out one single production run, never mind the several runs needed just to break even on the costs.

Many thanks to Mike Wolf and Ken Bianco for the time and effort for an informative "program."

brianel_k-lineguy posted:

 

Maybe I'm thinking overly optimistically in this entitlement culture that America has become. At the end of the stream last night, some one asked the question, why does MTH cancel products? The answer was and is as obvious as asking would you go to work knowing you will not receive a paycheck.

 

Maybe I'm thinking overly optimistically in this entitlement culture that America has become.

It's not the consumer's job to determine whether a request or suggestion is feasible.
That's the responsibility of the manufacturer/importer.

They seem to be handling the task just fine.

I'd be curious to know if any of the people who were able to watch the video on Facebook last night do not have a Facebook account.

At 9:00 pm I went to Facebook and saw the window for the video.  I responded "Not Now" when prompted to either log in or create an account.  My computer sat for over 15 minutes waiting for the video to start.  I restarted my browser and tried again....same thing....waited for over 15 minutes and video never started.  I have a 60 Mbps broadband connection and can easily stream video content.  I do not have Facebook account, and I do not plan to ever have a Facebook account.  Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg has Facebook set up to give priority to Facebook account holders?

I hope that any future MTH/Trainworld videos do not use Facebook.

The video is great!

A lot of work goes into each product with fantastic results.

Thank you.

Mark, I did wonder if the person asking that question was a member here? Now I know. 

Though it is not MTH, Thomas Haedrich from Atlas once said "Atlas needed to transfer thousands of its proprietary molds and tools from multiple factory and warehouse locations to multiple new supplier locations. This was easier said than done. Mold transfers were delayed, incomplete, damaged, etc., which necessitated Atlas to remake needed molds and tools, acquire new machinery, and in some cases go through a steep manufacturing learning curve." Mike Wolf certainly echoed this last night, when he talked about the complexity of relocation of his tooling.

So going back to Atlas for a moment, the Industrial Rail line appears to have been dropped. Now, this is speculation on my part, but based upon what Haedrich said, if the IR tooling was damaged, that would mean Atlas having to invest more money into either replacing or repairing the tooling. So it may not be a situation of the popularity (or prior profitability) of the Industrial Rail products, but an issue of Atlas investing more money into the product line that may or may not easily be recuperated, given the price point of the IR product line.

In all fairness to your question - and as you mentioned in your above post - yes there are other reasons, which you certainly hit upon, illustrating a better than average understanding of the manufacturing process. But probably the number one reason for why something gets cancelled (as Mike Wolf has said before, as well as last night) is lack of orders. I was at YORK one year when someone asked Mike for products in a particular road name. Without hesitation, Mike responded that it doesn't sell. On another side, people have criticized MTH for all their "fantasy" paint schemes yet Mike has responded that they get made because they continue to sell. So in that particular instance the fantasy schemes, while they may not be everyone's preference, they contribute to a positive bottom line for MTH, which helps keep them in business. 

Hey Vince, 

Sorry to hear you weren't able to watch it live.   You can still watch it on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/trainworldtv

The only plus about going through facebook is you get to ask questions and comment.  I looked at other systems to do this and you would still need to create a login to make comments so it is just easier to have it on facebook when most people already have accounts on FB instead of registering on a new system noone has heard about.  I will always post these on youtube so don't sweat it. 

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback.  Here are some companies that I will have on in the next month
Lionel (July)
Rapido Trains Jason Shron (Not sure where or what he will show but he is a out of the box thinker so Im sure it will be wild!)
Adam Tager MRC/Mantua/Model Power  June 5th
Kato New Product Announcements Friday June 9th


What would you like to see from the following O scale companies.?
Williams?
Lionel ?