all good things come to an end.

[RAM]

Atlas Model Railroad Co. Inc. announced today that it will discontinue its model railroad forums, www.atlasrr.com/forums, effective Tuesday, May 1st.  They have been active for 15 years.

[richg]

Atlas Model Railroad Co. Inc. announced today that it will discontinue its model railroad forums, www.atlasrr.com/forums, effective Tuesday, May 1st.  They have been active for 15 years.

In case the site goes away completely, better go save the pages that interest you now into your PC as a HTML. That option is easily available, that way the complete page is saved to your PC. I do that a lot for certain websites and a couple of them did go away.
File/Save Page As.
You can also download the photos you like.

Rich

[jward]

i wonder how many of the atlas forum people will migrate over here? there was alot of expertise over there.

[richg]

i wonder how many of the atlas forum people will migrate over here? there was alot of expertise over there.

That could cause problems here. The Powers That Be do not like much discussion of other brands of products here.
I suspect many will head to the Model Railroader, Trains.com site and a couple other sites that I frequent.
Another site I use to belong to and not very active went away recently but it was pretty much run by one person.

Rich

[Bucksco]

All are welcome but you are correct - this is the BACHMANN online forum. it is a forum maintained by BACHMANN for the discussion of BACHMANN products. It is not a "public" site.

[Michigan Railfan]

Funny, just a couple of days ago I was thinking about joining those forums. I wonder why they're closing them...

[NarrowMinded]

They heard you were coming!

[Michigan Railfan]

They heard you were coming!

Good one 

On the main page of the forums, they gave the reasons as to why they are shutting down:

In making the announcement Atlas CEO, Tom Haedrich explained the decision behind the shut down as, "a result of the ever-increasing amount of time and other valuable resources expended to monitor and administer the forums. Besides the monthly costs of bandwidth, software and service providers, Atlas dedicates a significant amount of precious R&D staff time responding both on and offline to forum based issues and problems. It's time that Atlas reestablished these limited resources, in particular valued R&D employee time, toward increased efforts at developing new and innovative model railroad products ", Haedrich said.

I dont see how running a forum can really cost that much. Yardmaster, does it really cost a lot to run a forum like this? I don't think a forum would really cost so much that they are forced to shut it down.

[richg]

They heard you were coming!

Good one 

On the main page of the forums, they gave the reasons as to why they are shutting down:

In making the announcement Atlas CEO, Tom Haedrich explained the decision behind the shut down as, "a result of the ever-increasing amount of time and other valuable resources expended to monitor and administer the forums. Besides the monthly costs of bandwidth, software and service providers, Atlas dedicates a significant amount of precious R&D staff time responding both on and offline to forum based issues and problems. It's time that Atlas reestablished these limited resources, in particular valued R&D employee time, toward increased efforts at developing new and innovative model railroad products ", Haedrich said.

I dont see how running a forum can really cost that much. Yardmaster, does it really cost a lot to run a forum like this? I don't think a forum would really cost so much that they are forced to shut it down.

The question that begs asking. Have you tried to find out how much it cost to run a forum?
Don't forget staying up with the latest efforts of Hackers and Stammers.
Programmers do not work for free.
Oops, the answer is in the quote. Go back and look.

Rich

[Rangerover1944]

Funny, just a couple of days ago I was thinking about joining those forums. I wonder why they're closing them...

FLAME WARS........ it's not the first time I've seen Atlas shut down due to bickering by a few, great site otherwise with lots of information, but they claim the employees of Atlas would much better serve their employer by doing some real work instead of monitoring the forum, if you read the reason Atlas gave on the web site. Special preordering everything seems to be a major complaint and certain loco's and rolling stock are always out of supply! Older modellers are concerned that newcomers to the hobby give up due to lack of most popular items and of course the sticker shock of most everything. Atlas track is being moved to a new facility and seems to be a shortage of that! If you go there and read the forums you'll soon see what I mean. My opinion is that is was a great site, just ignore the trolls! Don't feed them! Jim

[jward]

it would seem to me that, with all the potential new voices on this forum, that this would not be a good time to be territorial about this space. while i realize the primary purpose of this forum is support for bachmann products, most of us in the hobby buy what we like from many sources. we all benefit from each others experiences, as related on this forum. please don't be shortsighted and drive away the potential expansion of this forum by adopting a "bachmann only" philosophy. this company has done a very good job over the years of providing a place where we can all come together and discuss the hobby. you now have an excellent opportunity to show others what bachmann is all about, and that you are in a position to expand the hobby through innovative products and free exchange of ideas......

[richg]

Bachmann has decided on these forums, not the members. Read his post on this issue.
Bachmann productsdiscussions would nearly be lost under all the other manufactures products in all the different discussions.
Good chance this discussion will be locked pretty soon.

Rich

[Rangerover1944]

You know Rich you have a good point. This site should be about Bachmann products after all. I joined the Atlas site 7 years ago when I came back to model railroading only because I had purchased several DCC Atlas Loco's with sound as well as this site because I purchased several Bachmann loco's, EZ track switch's and other Bachmann DCC products including my EZ Command DCC system. I didn't dare mention EZ Command over on the Atlas Site without  getting slammed.

There are plenty of good sites for all brands and scales of model railroading that don't have a title for a particular manufacturer. Model Railroader Magazine is very informative and so is Model Railroad Forum that covers everything associated with this hobby.

I have already gotten myself in a couple flame wars right here over Bachmann DCC and other Bachmann products, shame when I come to a manufacturer's site and get slammed for the use of their product by other posters of my decision to use and enjoy said products.

I'm quite sure there are already posters on this site that belong to Atlas and other sites that come here and abide by the rules as posted in the sticky's some on the other hand will always behave in a different way! Jim

[Bucksco]

Overall most folks behave well on our forum. There are always a few people who have an agenda and we pretty much know who they are and we keep a close watch on their postings. I think this whole situation highlights the reason that we try to keep the discussions centered on Bachmann - it takes time and money to run the forum and Bachmann is expending said resources. This gives Bachmann the right to direct the content and direction of the forum.

[CNE Runner]

Honestly, I have to thank Bachmann Trains for maintaining one of my favorite forums. While we aren't supposed to discuss other manufacturer's products, Bachmann has been willing to 'look the other way' on many of our discussions. To that end I sincerely thank the entire Bachmann team.

For those of you who wish involvement in another forum (actually quite similar to this one), or know of some soon-to-be-ex Atlas forum members, may I suggest a look at the Free Rails forum [freerails.com]? I have 'met' the nicest, most informed, folks in that arena and heartily recommend it.

BTW: I am a member (of Free Rails) as 'CNE Runner' and have included some in depth information on my Monks' Island Railway therein. One change: we sign our posts with our first (given) names...something that needs to be started here.

Ray