Re: UP licensing

I personally don't perceive the Union Pacific as backpedaling at all, in any sense.
There have been myriad assertions that Union Pacific has undertaken their program in order to make scads of money, cash-in on their name at the expense of modelers, etc.
At the Union Pacific Historical Society convention in Omaha last month, where this news was first made public by the railroad, an attendee stated before the crowd that he deals with similar programs and that a certain large farm equipment manufacturer gets 10%. So, Union Pacific's 3% (which, by the way, drops with increasing sales of UP-related products by manufacturers) doesn't seem so heavy anyway. We were advised that quite a number of licensee's are paying in the area of 1.5%, so don't think every model purchased is bearing a 3% charge.
I believe the diversion of profits to the Heritage program is an effort to demonstrate that their licensing program is not going to dump untold sums of money into their general fund.
In addition, the threshold beyond which manufacturers must pay for use of the various logos and trademarks was doubled recently.
I think it safe to state that comparatively few people "like" this program and similar others, but it's not going to go away in the near future, if ever. There's no use arguing about it, it's here, and Union Pacific won't be the last, just as John mentioned.
John