MTH Firsts and Innovations

A solid list. I learned a lot about the history going back. I too have many of each company's product. Thanks for sharing.

Mike

Mostly I agree, and am a big fan of MTH.

If I may add 2 things:

- the way that an MTH product almost never surprised you when you opened the box. The general high quality continued for as long as I was a true "train buyer". It almost always had that predictable "MTH" look and feel, a good thing. Lionel could match it, but not consistently. But - MTH is Mikes Train House - his name is on the door, I suppose in the way that "Lionel" once was there.

- Lionel still wins for me when it comes to command control. I still use TMCC and a CAB-1, which does everything that I want a locomotive to do. I don't feel like it is "blind' - I'm at the controls, and it still feels intuitive, not a valued thing in a digital world, I suppose.

I would add the Coors Light set as an innovation. This was the first time that the engine was used to activate the cars. That technology was promised to be used in future MTH offerings, but alas, it wasn't to be.

MTH added graphics to the tinplate freight and some new and whacky items like the girls set...the green comet...the red comet the silver comet....the Showroom cars....

rat

So, what is the actual deal with MTH at this point? I have a small handful of MTH locomotives, but generally only the ones that aren't available from Lionel (Turbotrain, the UP GTELs, etc...), so I don't pay a LOT of attention to the company, but didn't they close up shop and sell all the tooling? Or their owner retired? It's confusing because I see Atlas engines that look a lot like MTH engines, down to the electronics, but also there's Lionel engines using MTH tooling, but ALSO MTH is still putting out new trains, but with a website that's pretty terrible to use and with no catalogs? And then there's the app/WTIU which seems to be a mess at the moment. What's going on with the company?

To me, the biggest 'thing' MTH did was to give Lionel reason to get off it's butt and start adding new tooling to the company! Otherwise we'd likely still be dealing with endless repaints of post war equipment...  at least for a decade or so. :-)

@Rod Stewart: respectfully, Lionel was using DC motors in the mid 1980’s-ish. Not in their high end stuff but in their entry level sets. Perhaps a nit-pick but technically correct.

Steve

Lionel also had their high end Acela set with opening doors, cars tilting into the curves, pantographs that auto operated with the direction of the engine going. It did have a bunch of problems but for those of us that hung in there and got the set to operated perfectly, it is a jaw dropper.  MTH did have the Coors set to kind of match it.  Doors opened and simulated cold mist (smoke) came billowing out - a jaw dropper on their part.

MTH also did European trains (I wish I had acquired a few when they were offered).  There were some classics and if they offered the Mallard again, I’d jump at the chance.

BTW, regarding the MTH website, I understand that it is being redesigned and should be out in the not-too-distant future (although I’m not sure wha that means).

DCS made it so you didn't have to memorize stuff to run trains. You could build a large consist of anything you wanted. Functions didn't need to be remapped. Speed curves didn't need to be adjusted. I was hooked. I still am.

@RideTheRails posted:

@Rod Stewart: respectfully, Lionel was using DC motors in the mid 1980’s-ish. Not in their high end stuff but in their entry level sets. Perhaps a nit-pick but technically correct.

Steve

This was not done to increase the quality of the low end sets but rather a way to make them cheaper. Those motors were pretty weak and about on par with what you might find in disposable toys of that time.

First to install DCC decoders at the factory making it a standard feature with PS3 and include it as such with all engines going forward.

@J.Dooley posted:

So, what is the actual deal with MTH at this point? I have a small handful of MTH locomotives, but generally only the ones that aren't available from Lionel (Turbotrain, the UP GTELs, etc...), so I don't pay a LOT of attention to the company, but didn't they close up shop and sell all the tooling? Or their owner retired? It's confusing because I see Atlas engines that look a lot like MTH engines, down to the electronics, but also there's Lionel engines using MTH tooling, but ALSO MTH is still putting out new trains, but with a website that's pretty terrible to use and with no catalogs? And then there's the app/WTIU which seems to be a mess at the moment. What's going on with the company?

Mike Wolf retired and some remaining employees decided to continue the company, but they purged off a lot of their tooling. They sold some to Lionel, and some to Atlas. Apparently Atlas decided that instead of moving the tooling to another factory, to keep it at the MTH factory and strike a deal with MTH to use their DCS electronics. Smart move. That's why many Atlas products look like MTH. It is ex MTH tooling with MTH electronics coming out of the same factory as the current MTH stuff. They just rebranded it as Atlas Premier and put in an Atlas box.

MTH has resorted to sending out emails to subscribers to announce new products. Emails are sent out very frequently. I wish they would just do a catalog, as it makes planning pre-orders a little difficult.

I feel like MTH really innovated starter sets. My first new train set was a Railking Pennsy Turbine. It came with Realtrax, an infrared remote, and all the bells and whistles with smoke. It also came with a video cassette and track layout software. All this was standard with an MTH starter set.

I agree with the RailKing starter sets being very innovative. The steam locomotives were diecast and included the same electronics as their Premier engines, ultimately including DCS. A great value for the money at the time. Hopefully MTH will offer them again - a great introduction to the hobby.

Hungry Wolf vs. Sleeping Lion. Took years for Lionel to even react to MTH. By that time, Wolf had a solid foothold in the 3rail O Gauge market. In 1995, I bought 2 MTH conventional starter sets with made in Korea classic sized GG1s. They were bulletproof. I then began to replace all my Lionel engines with analogous MTH product. Blown away by PS1 sounds, I would never look back. Not knocking Lionel, but, they got left at the starting gate.

@Stinky1 posted:

Mike Wolf retired and some remaining employees decided to continue the company, but they purged off a lot of their tooling. They sold some to Lionel, and some to Atlas. Apparently Atlas decided that instead of moving the tooling to another factory, to keep it at the MTH factory and strike a deal with MTH to use their DCS electronics. Smart move. That's why many Atlas products look like MTH. It is ex MTH tooling with MTH electronics coming out of the same factory as the current MTH stuff. They just rebranded it as Atlas Premier and put in an Atlas box.

MTH has resorted to sending out emails to subscribers to announce new products. Emails are sent out very frequently. I wish they would just do a catalog, as it makes planning pre-orders a little difficult.

These were not employee decisions. Mike semiretired and placed Rich in charge. Mike still owns MTH. He tried to sell off the whole company, with the exception of his tinplate tooling. Mike sold off what he could and he found he had produce trains in order to make parts. That is why everything is a special offering.  MTH parts is a equal partnership between three people, Mike Wolf, Mike Reagan and Mark Hipp.

Now that Mike has hired his son in law to work for the company, it is my opinion that sometime in the future the company maybe left to his daughter and son in law.

Scott Smith

Honestly, that sounds like a complete mess. Hopefully they get some stability and direction, it's clear that there are people who are big fans of the product they used to put out. Some great replies in this thread.

@J.Dooley posted:

Honestly, that sounds like a complete mess. Hopefully they get some stability and direction, it's clear that there are people who are big fans of the product they used to put out. Some great replies in this thread.

I think it's unfair to call their new business model "messy".  It is apparently working as they continue to produce a great quantity of quality products.  I especially like the high end steam that is produced in Korea.  Catalogs are expensive to produce and a thing of the past honestly.  Have you seen a Wishbook from Sears or a Sears lately?

@J.Dooley posted:

Honestly, that sounds like a complete mess. Hopefully they get some stability and direction, it's clear that there are people who are big fans of the product they used to put out. Some great replies in this thread.

I don't think that MTH is necessarily a "complete mess". I have purchased a couple of new post-2020 MTH engines (one 2024) and they perform exceptionally well, with no issues at all.

Yesterday I was on the MTH parts site. it went very smoothly, just entered the product number and picked the parts from the blowup views. Easy-peasy. Checkout was smooth using Paypal. Supposed to ship today so hopefully that works.

Rod

Would love to see MTH get back to offering some tinplate. If anything will open my wallet quickly, that'll do it.

I'm an MTH fan, and I agree with a lot of the above posts. You always knew what you were getting when you pre-ordered. IMO, not so with the orange box company. With MTH, there was running consistency from one steam engine to another and one diesel to another. And if you didn't like what they produced you could go elsewhere. The other big thing for me was (as Zenith stated), "the quality went in before the name went on".

Gerry

Did MTH maybe have gotten the Big L to pay more attention to colors??  My first foray into modern engines was about 5 years ago when I bought a Lionel RS-11 in Central Vermont green. I bought it strictly to get the road name , but the color is deplorable.  I had to swallow hard to even buy it since the color is not even close. I'd dearly love to repaint it, but I do love the way the engine runs.

I would amend No. 10 on the list to include simply buildings and details, not operating, just buildings and details. No. 10 by itself is what's most important and relevant to me, albeit in the past during MTH's Heyday. I think most of their buildings were copied from HO scale stuff, and some are now being made by other companies, though at markedly increased MSRP.

One of the professional layout builders once said: "Competition extracts the best out of companies." I like that statement.

@Paul Kallus posted:

I would amend No. 10 on the list to include simply buildings and details, not operating, just buildings and details. No. 10 by itself is what's most important and relevant to me, albeit in the past during MTH's Heyday. I think most of their buildings were copied from HO scale stuff, and some are now being made by other companies, though at markedly increased MSRP.

One of the professional layout builders once said: "Competition extracts the best out of companies." I like that statement.

Sorry Paul; I have to disagree. The offerings I am referring to are ones like the operating gas stations in Sinclair and Esso names (there may be others). And then there is the car wash, as well as Mels Diner stand, and lets not forget the firehall. Again there may be others. These are all attention grabbers and kids of all ages love them. Note these above items are specific to MTH; no one else produced them.

Rod

A friend had an HO layout with "many" engines, mostly diesels. He bought from all of the HO locomotive manufacturers, and he was always fiddling around with the DCC curve settings to match all of his engines, so he could run anything together and they would all speed-match. Mike's DCS changed all of that, and I am a big fan of both the DCS system and MTH engines. Mike's Premier diesels available with a solid non-swinging pilot eliminated the "dancing claw coupler" effect as a train ran on a layout.

I think that a major innovation was Mike's decision to include "DCC capability" in his engines by flicking a switch. To those who had invested in DCC systems, they now had the opportunity to use MTH locomotives. I also applaud Mike's offering of separate wheel sets for diesels so they could operate on either 2 rail or 3 rail track.

I believe that MTH was the first to included "Kadee coupler pads" on rolling stock. The net effect of this feature made a freight train much more prototypical looking as it eliminated claw couplers and reduced the distance between cars in a train.

Perhaps the most important contribution of MTH was that his company consisted of model railroaders who cared about correct colors and railroad specific detail, and consistently shipped a quality product at a price point lower than major competition.

@c.sam posted:

To me, the biggest 'thing' MTH did was to give Lionel reason to get off it's butt and start adding new tooling to the company! Otherwise we'd likely still be dealing with endless repaints of post war equipment...  at least for a decade or so. :-)

I agree Sam. I think by the early 90's Lionel had become pretty complacent. When MTH hit the train scene it was a wakeup call that they had better get off top dead center and get some new stuff in the works. Ya gotta like it.

Rod

@Bob Golfs posted:

BTW, regarding the MTH website, I understand that it is being redesigned and should be out in the not-too-distant future (although I’m not sure wha that means).

The last time MTH promised it was redesigning the website, it was for parts.  While they finally got there, it took about ten years.  They were telling us in the MTH tech classes in 2013 that it was "coming soon".

What I liked about the MTH offering was the stuff that you never saw from Lionel, and still don't!  Stuff like the UP #80 Coal Turbine, the UP Big Blow Turbine, the UP Propane Turbine, and the C&O Coal Turbine all were unique to MTH.

Up until now, they also did stuff like the Galloping Goose and the Doodlebug, only when Lionel bought the molds for the Doodlebug did we see them coming from Lionel.

MTH also introduced the stainless steel plating on some of their HO F3 Santa Fe's in the red warbonnet and the yellow bonnet 14-15 years ago and later on their O scale E and F unit diesels far ahead of Lionel who finally offered some rather low luster plating on their Legacy Santa Fe's.

I remember when we received the first RK Challenger with the twin can motored drive system (like the non scale GG1's) that could negotiate tight curves and turned on the smoke it amazed all of us at our hobby shop - the volume of smoke produced was fantastic - a first in O gauge for us!

MTH made this New Haven EP -3  electric engine with pantographs in 2005 in Proto 2 with a steam generator       ( smoke ) that I like and also the pantographs go  up and down with direction changes.   I just ran it with my WTIU remote and everything worked perfectly.  Really nice detail in a die cast body too.

Rod, I see you're meaning. And there's also the operating fire station. Besides the fire station, the only operating items I have (and have room for) are the operating transfer station and operating storage tank station. I may be mistaken, yet the Railking line of "scale" operating crossing "things" may have been a first with regards to them being "scale."

Another thing MTH did was include prototypical-appearing railings on all its diesels, even the least-expensive RailKing models. Lionel still features those ugly stamped-steel, folded-over railings on their low-end diesels. They were fine in the postwar era when buyers were content with their trains as toys, mere facsimiles of "real" trains. But today, when most buyers have higher expectations of realism in their model trains, those railings just don't cut it.

MTH!!! The father of the rebirth of Modern "O" interest! IMO.

Greg

I consolidated my original list with many of the suggestions that were provided by others into one document attached below as a pdf for anyone interested. Many thanks to all who contributed!

It is an impressive list, Rod and everyone!!

We need ONE more to round this up to 20. My original comment was that MTH forced Lionel to expand their offerings to keep up. Might that qualify for #20?   :-)

I am a huge MTH fan. @Rod Stewart I read your list. It is very well done and comprehensive.

Thanks all. When you skim through the list, and I know we have missed a few things, you get a glimpse of what a huge impact Mike Wolf and MTH have had on our hobby over the years. No matter what happens going forward that influence will always be with us!