Atlas alerted members of their Atlas Insiders Email List about a warehouse sale about a year ago. That one was cancelled due to weather considerations and the replacement was held back in October of this year. I was out of town and could not go to that one.
It was such a success they decided to do it a second time back on November 21 and I was actually able to attend. It was nice to see one of Atlas' facilities, see what was leftover from the first sale, and get some face time with the family that current runs Atlas. I was able to speak a little bit with Jesse Haedrich, one of the family members that make Atlas successful today. He is a GM at Atlas and was the brainchild behind the warehouse sale. He was extremely nice and willing to chat about quite a few things.
Atlas had these warehouse sales (and plans to continue to do them perhaps once a year - I did read they are considering an online warehouse sale at some point in the future) in order to provide some much needed cleanup. Back in the day, Stephan Schaffan, founder of Atlas, had upwards of four different warehouses scattered around Hillside, NJ to house Atlas. As Atlas modernized, this number shrank, but one them is still located across the street from Atlas's headquarters. The original intent for the warehouse sale was for Atlas to clean out their archives [Check out this
YT video...the Atlas archive had 1 of everything ever made! They use it for model/color references for product development. The AtlasO archive is near the end! ] as well as reduce the amount of spare models (for parts) they have on hand. The shelves of the
Atlas warehouse were overflowing with duplicate archive items, decorated
pre-production, test samples, show samples as well as products with
damaged or missing packaging.
In regard to the spare bodies, this has been hinted at by other manufacturers from Lionel to 3rd Rail, but getting painted spare parts from overseas in general can be difficult. Many of these companies, including Atlas, can only get painted spare parts if they order extra bodies. It turns out Atlas may have ordered just a few too many spares for this purpose. They have figured out how many they realistically need, have adjusted those numbers, but have offered the unnecessary body shells to the public at a discount price. Note that they didn't come with trucks, which is good if someone just needed kitbash fodder or already has a stash of trucks. However for those who just want a nice RTR car, Atlas was selling their newer thin-sideframe trucks at a slight discount, but only if you picked up some of these bodies that needed trucks.
This particular event required an RSVP that cost $5, but gave a $10 discount at checkout, so essentially Atlas provided $5 discount on top of the discounted prices. If you paid cash, tax was paid by Atlas as well, so as always, having cash a model train sale wins the day.
Outside of physical product, I think the only thing that would have made this better would be that Atlas was able to give a tour of their headquarters building to see where all the magic happens. Maybe jlwii2000 can make that happen on YouTube at some point.
Without further ado, below is my image essay of the event, which include some shots from my travel from NYC to Atlas and back, all via public transportation, which for those who care, took about 90 minutes each way from the UES and cost about $20 round-trip between the MTA and NJT.
Note - All images are high-res and can be clicked on to see more detail.
Here was my route from the UES. Took the Q down to Time Square/42nd St and walked to the PABT above ground. (Yes there is a tunnel, but it wasn't raining and this is faster.) My goal was to get to Atlas right about when the line formed. Considering there had already been a previous sale and I don't have a lot of room in my NYC shoe-box, I didn't really care if I got in right away. I mainly just wanted to photograph this event for history's sake. I did not photograph any of the subways I took, but you can see the cars I ride on a daily basis here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car) I stood in car 9107 downtown and car 9021 uptown.
The Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT) is an interesting place. Having only taken two NJT buses including this one, I never know where the the slip is, but the guy manning the info booth at the front knew exactly where to go and told me what number slip to go to. I think it was 223. In any case, you follow the signs in the maze and hope the bus number matches up with the bus number that Google maps told you to take. I also make sure I buy the tickets on my phone before I get there, so I don't have to deal with the lines at the ticket machines. As the photo shows, I made it to the slip for bus 114 (and a few others behind me). You wait inside the air conditioned area until the bus shows up and then activate your ticket, and show it to the driver as you get on.
As much of a maze for the commuters, there is a long concrete maze outside that lets the buses easily to/from the Lincoln Tunnel. The PABT is literally right there. Here's a photo of us going toward the tunnel. There was an interesting tow truck that made a U-turn shortly before we merged onto this ramp.
Here's the view any commuter or tourist will see if they're on the right-hand side of their bus as they exit the Lincoln Tunnel and curve back around up and over the tunnel portal to continue west. This is looking from NJ over the Hudson River at midtown Manhattan.
Here's the first set of tracks right after all of the overpass tunnels of Union City. Taken from the NJ-495 overpass. The garbage train cars on the left have plants growing out of them, they've been there so long.
This is a little bit down I-95 and shows an interesting building (probably used for the swing bridge to the right) along with a tension tower right after the always-open swing bridge in the Meadowlands. This bridge crosses over the Hackensack River. The trackage is Ex-Erie, and Ex-NJT (Boonton Line). To the left are overhead towers, but the track was never electrified. DB Jct is to the left where the routes would divert to either the Seaboard Lead or the Newark Branch. We will see the ROW on the opposite side on the return trip.
This view is from I-95. There are a ton of yards on either side of I-95 as you go south from 495. For those who only know NJ turnpike exit numbers, this is the yard looking east right before exit 14.
Another view of the same yard. Earlier, there was a mainline that had what looked like a unit tank train on it. Makes some sense considering there is an oil refinery off of I-95 in Linden, south of the Newark airport.
Looks like there was a rail grinder or some other MoW crew out on the tracks to the left of the same yard above.
So for those who have never taken a bus before, they announce the stops as they approach. Usually very little warning if the driver is as fast as you'd like him to be. The closest stop is Hiawatha Ave off of Hillside Ave and I knew this because of Google Maps on my phone. I hit the stop button as soon as I heard this stop.
I walked a block and a half from the bus and hit Norman Place and made a left. The bus stop for the way home was about 4 blocks from the warehouse and at Florence Ave and Liberty Ave. One cannot trust the timetable on Google as the bus just shows up whenever it shows up because of road conditions. I literally saw it when I got to the corner and had to run across traffic to barely make the bus.
This is what the front of the Atlas HQ looks like. Part of the building contains a warehouse from what I understand, but this is not our actual destination.
This is the location of the warehouse sale and is across the street from the back of the HQ building.
All of the spots in the lot were taken and there were a decent amount of cars along the street at 950am.
This was the back of the Atlas HQ building. Those cars contained more people there for the show.
The line literally formed right after I took the previous photo and I was maybe 5th or so in line. They had a note on the door that listed hours and that if you didn't sign up on evite, you wouldn't be allowed in.
This was the line about 3 or so minutes before open.
They came out and welcomed us in. Jarrett Haedrich even held the door open for us. Only 20 people allowed in at first, but honestly there was plenty of room for more. There was no York frenzy or anything; everyone was very calm. I think we all realized the insane deals probably left in the first sale.
They checked your evite against their list and then you got to go in.
This was literally right inside the door. I am guessing AtlasO used to be housed out of this building and the testing and everything was done there, but I forgot to ask about this.
Lol. I think they got the rules all covered. Can't blame them, I suppose.
This is one of three photos I took as soon as I entered the threshold of the warehouse. This is looking left. They have carts there for those who want to buy everything in sight, lol. Immediately in front of you is the HO spare bodies. I think the boxes to the left were N-scale and/or signal gear. There was more HO or N scale in the far distance, as was the show models /broken table.
This is directly in front of me. Rows and rows of spare parts bodies. No trucks. Every row had a sign in front of it of what was there. HO was up front and O Scale was near the middle toward the back and also the right hand side.
Looking right, O scale was all along the right side of the wall, and if you needed boxes to carry anything, there were some to the immediate right.
People always want to see the deals. So let's begin. Here are some of the cars from the archives. Prices were marked or shown in the signs. There were 2R and 3R cars everywhere.
An example of 8K tank cars that were $40 and $45 each. For dealers afraid that things were being given away, this is not the case at all.
An assortment of 89' flatcars was next to the shelving. Perhaps the only rolling stock I don't own from AtlasO that I wish I had one or two of. They were asking $80 each, which for the older 2R Southern models they had there, was more than the 2002 MSRP of $75. I guess their 30% off was based on their 2019 MSRP of $120, which only a handful in the pile were of that vintage. It did not come home with me.
Some more newish stock for sale. Note the higher prices. These are not from the archives.
If these weren't the modernized ones without the roofwalks, I would have bit at $35 - a steal.
More RTR cars.
Interesting $400 AB set of EMD Demonstrator F2 units that was a Golden Spike Club exclusive.
A small sampling of building these had available.
Now for the spare bodies that they would use for parts. Every row had something different. The shell prices would vary depending on the model. Rows 1 and 2 had most of the boxcars.
Rows 3 and 4 had all of the tank cars.
Rows 5 and 6 had a hodgepodge of equipment including the CZ cars and Berwick Boxcars (which they listed as 60' Double Plug Door).
Rows 7 and 8 had an assortment of flat cars, coil cars, and hoppers.
Rows 9 and 10 had more hoppers and some gondolas.
Rows 11 and 12 had cabooses and various steam-era boxcars.
This table had a bunch of show samples and damaged cars. I saw an item or two I wanted, but they were damaged and even at $25, I just didn't want to be bothered. This table would be good for parts or even just to give something interesting to a child where you wouldn't care if they broke anything on it. No boxes, which would have also made it harder for me personally to take something home in my backpack. There was some small scale track behind where I took the photo too.
Some Industrial Rail setup for sale too.
This was walled off with boxes, but just shows the rear of the warehouse and that Atlas has their own box truck.
Atlas has a new trainset with their trainkids brand. It was on display and for sale at the show. I commend them for making something relatively cheap to bring people into the hobby. I am not sure if doing the Acela would work for the largest audience, but it should at least work for the northeast crowd. Maybe this will do well enough to also do a freight train with some sort of play value that its equal or better than the Thomas wooden trains. This looks like a possible stepping stone to N, HO, or O scale trains.
Here was the figure-8 they were giving away for the pre-Black Friday deal.
So what do the spare bodies without trucks look like? Well let's go through a few examples. Note they come mostly only in clamshells and no boxes. Again, this was because these were intended as spare bodies.
An assortment of boxcar bodies.
Hopper and coil car bodies.
Flatcar bodies.
Gondola and hopper bodies.
Caboose bodies.
More caboose bodies.
This sign was over by the HO area. I suppose with this kind of sale, it was a needed reminder.
A shot or two of some HO deals. No idea if the prices are good.
Some more HO deals.
Here is the 2R Truck supply. There was a table of roughly the same amount of 3R trucks to the right of this. You could only purchase these if you bought a body that needed trucks. They admitted they are low stock on a few of their trucks, but they already have a shipment arriving soon that will fully replenish all trucks at a good level and should not run out anytime soon, for either the consumer or the dealer.
Here was the 3R Truck supply.
You could use this reference guide to figure out what trucks to buy depending on what bodies you purchased.
They had N and HO trucks too.
This was the cashier's table. Cash was the right table only despite the signs. The lines went a little slow because they handwrote the receipts. The exist was the door to the left of these tables, which I thought was convenient.
This the view back across much of the warehouse from the cashier's table. Overall the crowd was a little light, but then again this was the second sale. However I heard the crowds were relatively similar. People were definitely buying quite a bit of stuff and I would say judging by the quantity in people's hands, much of it was for people's layouts and not for resale, but you never know. I think the prices were high enough that it didn't make much sense to buy up a ton for resale, IMHO. This also wasn't advertised very much from what I saw, just to the insider's list. Not sure if Atlas wanted it this way, but they could use social media to be a bit more effective, including some of the online forums.
After awhile, a lady started to help write the receipts of people in line, so the people at the table could just handle the money. Smart.
This poor guy got assigned to build up some more boxes so people could more easily carry out their purchases.
There were quite a few very interesting looking industries off of US22 on the way home. I only got a decent photo of this one. This is the Flexon Industries building. It is right next to the Newark Airport stop on the NJT. I could not get a decent photo of the station since the bus was going fast.
This is a shot of EWR, aka Newark Airport. Better views can be had on I-95 right next to the runways.
This is a photo, albeit not great, of the Amtrak Substation 41 Kearny. There is a NJT train in the distance. To the right, is the NJT Meadowlands Maintenance Complex along with the CSX South Kearny Yard. If only they had a scenic overlook area for people to pull off over here and enjoy the view. You can see Midtown Manhattan and the FiDi in the background including the Empire State Building and the Freedom Tower.
Here is a decent shot of WMCA AM 570. I don't know too much about RF, but it looks like they have three radio towers in the water. I can only imagine this is a really nice spot to broadcast from.
This is the infamous Portal Bridge. Completed in 1910, it is known to get stuck open after swinging, causing commuter headaches. It carries NJT and Amtrak. More on
this bridge.
The ROW under the bridge is the same Erie line was that earlier described. This is right after the Portal Bridge.
This dominating structure is the Frank Lautenberg NJT Rail Station in Secaucus, NJ. It opened in 2003 and was named for a senator who advocated for transit. This station is mainly a transfer hub. It helped make access to Hoboken easier. Amtrak does not stop here. One interesting plan wanted the MTA's 7 train to come all the way out here from Hudson Yards, though that plan doesn't seem like it will ever materialize.
This is a poor shot of the Croxton Intermodal Terminal. I tried to google this facility, but there aren't any really good websites with images and knowledge of the facility other than this
NS PDF map:
This photo essay ends with the same tracks that were right by Union City. Right after these tracks is the closest Sonic Drive-In to NYC. From here, one drives a bit further past Union City and goes back through the Lincoln Tunnel to the PABT. The bus drops you off at a random escalator and you find yourself back in the PABT maze. Again, follow signs to the street or the subway. Once at PABT, you grab whichever subway line gets you to your destination. For me, that was another 11 minutes in walking with an 11 minute Q ride.
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