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Life-Like Products LLC (now Life-Like Toy and Hobby division of Wm. K. Walthers) is a manufacturer of model railroad products and is based in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in the 1950s by a company that pioneered extruded foam ice chests under the Lifoam trademark. Because ice chests are a summer seasonal item, the company needed a way to keep the factory operating year round. As model railroading was becoming popular in the post-war years, they saw this as an opportunity and so manufactured extruded foam tunnels for model trains. Over the years, Life-Like expanded into other scenery items, finally manufacturing rolling stock beginning in the late 1960s. At some point in the early 1970s, Life-Like purchased Varney Inc. and began to produce the former Varney line as its own. In 2005, the company, now known as Lifoam Industries, LLC, decided to concentrate on their core products of extruded foam and sold their model railroad operations to Wm. K. Walthers. ==Proto 2000 line of products== The company was well known and highly regarded by hobbyists for its Proto 1000 and Proto 2000 line. These locomotives and freight cars were the best detailed for their price class, and even older, used examples are in high demand by hobbyists. Parts are readily available as the earlier drive systems are clones of Athearn drives and later drives are Kato clones. Some early Proto examples such as the EMD BL2, GP18, GP20, GP9, SD9 and Alco FA-2 were plagued with Chinese-made axle gears that would crack, causing the unit to run erratically or with loud "thumping" sounds. This problem was not exclusive to Life-like and also affected other manufacturers (like Bachmann) that manufactured models in China. The company honored its lifetime warranty on these units; one needed only to contact the company to obtain free replacements. With Walthers' purchase of the company, the warranty continued to be honored as before, however changes in the industry has made replacement parts harder to obtain. Contacting their Customer Service Department will still sometimes yield free replacements although replacement parts are more and more frequently out of stock. Because of this, more and more modelers are opting to skip Walthers Customer Service and buy original Athearn gears which are identical because the drives were cloned. The gearing problem has continued to plague various manufacturers using Chinese parts to this day. Starting in 1996, Life-Like began releasing HO scale freight cars under the Proto 2000 banner. These cars feature the same level of detailing as their locomotive counterparts. Complaints were received from various modelers as the small detail parts were easily lost or broken, so Life-Like now offers the cars in kit or ready-to-run form. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Life-Like」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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