There was one set for sale on that well-known Internet Auction Community, which was Bought Now pretty quickly. So they're coming... though marked on the MTL website as "Sold Out At Factory."
Dang, that is a super cool video! The workers are so adept -- it'd take me an hour to do what they do in ten seconds, and they do it all right here in the U.S.A.. Thanks for posting this bremner.
You guys should thank Joe D'Amato, he shared it with me. You can see his great moustache standing near the prototype car
I like how the sprues are already set for the holes in the car so it’s just a matter of the worker lining up part to the holes and a machine pushes them in and trims them off.
When the yellow carbody popped out, I leapt with joy! This looks like another landmark model for MTL. This looks like BLMA/ScaleTrains/ExactRail quality here. Can't wait until the red TTX logo version comes out!
This is a great video and a great American company. Kadee/Microtrains got me into N scale and they are still going strong, still producing quality products. We N-scalers are lucky!
Takes me back to my days of plastic injection molding! A little surprised though, in there's no flash at any joint, given how many slide plates there are! Very neat video!!
I would say that is because of either precision machines or very well made molds. Watching Lego be made is very similar in the flashing department, and what little they do make gets recycled into pellets again and run through the machines once again!
That’s what I did. Ground up rejects and added regrind to raw material and mixed it in. Still find it interesting watching something that complex being made!
American manufacturing is so cool. I am glad they survived that wildfire a few months ago. Imagine if the building had been destroyed and they lost all of those machines. Those dies and presses they use to put the parts together are pretty awesome. That's definitely not something a modeler would have. I am taking a Design for Manufacturability class next semester in college where we learn about stuff like this. The guys designing the multi-cavity molds really know what they are doing. It's one thing to make a CAD model of a car, its a lot harder to make the molds and deal with tolerances to actually produce it in real life. The way all the sliders come together to form the sides of the car is what I find so amazing about injection molding.