...............................But it is moot to ask now why they came up with the 20th edition of a Mogul or Mikado instead of a new K 27. Mistakes were made and they overestimated their own market power. That led to the rise of their competition.+++++stop on page 16++++continues now:
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| Lehmann Management in 1981.Top row left Eberhard Richter, top row right Wolfgang Richter; bottom left Klaus Baumann. The "bearded" head below Wolfgang Richter: Günter Ruhland -head mold Master |
GBP: At Lehman, how did they react to that?
H.-Jürgen Neumann: Like a stubborn, defiant child. Their absence from the 'Queen Mary' sales-show in the USA was such a mistake also an act of defiance.
GBP: Over the course of time Lehmann received many ideas from outside the company. Not all made it. In 1981, their anniversary year, they presented an "LGB cockpit with train-engineer functions" as the "new generation of the electronic throttle". It never made it into mass production. In the 1984 catalog a "Lighting and Workshop Car (No. 4075)" was announced that never made it, either. Then there was a" mechanical coupler system (No. 64540) that was gone just as fast. May be you know why these plans failed?
H.-Jürgen Neumann: They would have liked to offer that "LGB Cockpit " to the 'Bigtrainers' but the VDE-regulations (semi federal technical board in Germany, similar to UL in USA) did not seem to allow for that back then. And they had another problem; that thing would have been too expensive. With the 'Jumbo transformer' they later supplied the previously promised; and this time they used a trick to meet all the (technical) regulatory requirements. Regarding the "Lighting Car" they had pricing problems again; the car would have had no chance marketing-wise. The same happened to the curved turnout. The LGB-customers wanted them but the turnouts would have been way too expensive to manufacture. Back then they still kept an eye on price-performance ratio. In later years they got ruthless when it came to high prices. The coupler system was ingenious and the cars should have been uncoupled by 2 hooks. Obviously the LGB customers were operating their cars with just one hook and showed little interest in this product. So they took this coupler off the market after a while.
GBP: Over the years, Lehmann proved to be a surprise to their customers, again and again.I am thinking of the hand crafted models that were made by Christian Höhne (known as Magnus in USA). I am thinking of the commotion the 'Frank S' got as live steam locomotive, I am thinking of the metal models by Aster made in Japan for Lehmann from 1977 on, and I am thinking of ideas like the 'design-tuning' department which from 1995 to 1999 was at the disposal of the LGB customer for his customized LGB model in regard of coloring and imprints. Could you please elaborate from your point of view how you experienced these special products?
H.-Jürgen Neumann: First and foremost the LGB factory was a for-profit undertaking. Even though they manufactured for the hobby market and had a healthy nest-egg they still had to make a profit. For some models that were on the LGB customer's wish-list there was just not a big-enough market (to make it profitable). Mold manufacturing for a new model was already devouring several hundred thousand D-Marks (compare to $150,000 to $ 250,00.00 in 80's or early 90's) so you had to be relatively sure to sell enough (to cover development and production costs). A 'First Series' volume back then was about 3,000 (locos) manufactured. With the order sheets on hand from the dealers which they got at the annual Nuremberg Toy Fair the Lehmann guys could be relatively sure to sell (what they manufactured). And it wasn't before the third series of this model that they'd make any money. They manufactured a volume of 10,000 Moguls the first year but that (success) wasn't given to all (other) models.(Note : Yours truly cannot trace or confirm such manufacturing volumes for a Mogul first series in our research.)+++++++++++++to be continued+++++++++++++++
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