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Saturday, November 24, 2018

Update on Digitrax's Recovery Efforts After the 2018 Hurricane

The following information was posted on the Digitrax Users Forum on groups.io.

Nov 18. 2018

Got a call from Digitrax this past week with info regarding their latest status and projections. Thought I'd share with my railroad friends with their permission.

Digitrax has been devastated by the recent storm damage, - worse than first thought, but they are back working from their secondary facility with limited resources. They got their first (and ONLY) phone line on Tues. My Dealer Rep was calling all of his dealers to help in passing along the impact of the damages, and their recovery efforts to our customer base. The damage far exceeded the impact to the building, which we saw in earlier pictures, as their on-hand inventory was totally destroyed, or damaged to the point that it may have caused customer problems if they tried to recover it, - so a total loss! (This also included some long awaited parts shipments which had been delivered the week preceding the storm.) They elected to reorder EVERYTHING in order to ensure the quality of their products delivered to customers would not be impacted by any latent damage issues. This process is well underway with parts arriving weekly. They cannot disseminate the info broadly since they still do NOT have any Internet access in the area.

Current projections are to prioritize efforts on the most sensitive products (Command Stations, and other high impact hardware, etc.), with items such as decoders & supplies following. Current expectations are for them to be up and running shortly (in their alternate facility), with the first projected shipments to dealers in mid December. They hope to resume normal deliveries beginning sometime after the first of the year (possibly mid to late January).

The insurance claims have been processed, and efforts are proceeding as best they can. As was explained to me, many of the component parts are delivered to them with a cardboard like backing for use in their production equipment, and were therefore heavily water damaged. They elected not to tempt fate by trying to use them, as more significant long term damage could occur to their machinery in the process, so ALL NEW components/supplies will be used, and are already arriving. Their hope is to resume shipping on a normal schedule in mid to late January 2019.

Stay tuned for additional updates as we receive them.

UPDATE Sat., Nov 24, 2018

Received a call from one of my friends and customers who resides in southern Florida, and was not impacted by the recent storm. He informed me that he had just reported a problem with his older Zephyr (DCS50) yesterday to Digitrax via their Digitrax Website Help Desk. (Evidently they either have internet back.) He received a prompt reply, with problem resolved. Based on this conversation (less than an hour ago), I would assume that they are monitoring their Website Help Desk, and are responding, indicating possibly additional phone service, and/or internet at this time. Since it is the weekend, it will be early this coming week before I can potentially get additional info which I will pass on through this thread, with appropriate date identification.

Let's hope for the best for their efforts, and try to not inundate them during this sensitive recovery period.


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