Lots of people love the new RTR freight cars that are common in the market today, and I admit that I have my fair share of them, but they are not my favourite cars. I prefer to collect old cars like the Athearn tin bodied units with wood floors. Why? I simply like bringing them back to life.
Here are a few of my recent acquisitions:
I haven't done any work on them yet. They will all need metal wheel sets and some of the sprung trucks look a little iffy, but I like doing that sort of thing. A little dusting wouldn't hurt too.
Please show us some of your really old pieces of rolling stock that you still have in active service.
Cheers!!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
I used to restore old wood kits, even made my own Z moulding for some repairs as the size dosen't exist anymore pre made.
Nice cars. Where you get them?
Very nice. I have a moderately large roster of old Athearn and Varney metal cars as well as a few other brands. I have some that are NOS that I have not built yet, some that my father built, and some like your aquired already built.
Their appearance holds up pretty will in my opinion, the blend right in with both current and various other older products.
Well worth saving in my opinion.
Sheldon
Here is what I like to think about these vintage pieces of rolling stock.
1) How the very first owner must had been delighted/proud to build an run them around their "pike".
2) How happy that craftsmen would be knowing what they put their heart and sole into is still polishing rail head and not trashed, shelved or just plain forgotten.
I will see if I can post some pictures on this still "wackie" site.
kasskaboose Nice cars. Where you get them?
Ebay, train shows, train stores that sell used equipment, estate sales, and in the case of someof mine, handed down thru the family.
The old Athearn kits with wood floor and metal sides, ends, roof, frame and detail parts can build up into a nice looking car. Varney had a line that was similar. The Athearn metal car kit line was taken over by a firm whose name I no longer recall in the early 1960s, and about a decade later Menzies acquired the line and introduced it with packaging in a plastic bag. The old Varney line was reintroduced by Bowser for a time, but as undecorated rolling stock versus the beautiful lithographed sides that Varney featured.
Some of the advantages: the scale thickness of the boxcar doors and the close to scale way the doors operated, the brake gear on the underframe coud be correctly positioned unlike the erroneous blue box plastic frame (wrong due to misreading the drawings), the paint schemes were often more accurate for the modeled car than were the later plastic cars, the fact that painted metal looks just like ... painted metal (!), and that there were separate ladders and grab irons versus cast-on plastic (and the fussy modeler could replace the oversize grabs with thinner wire). Things like dented sides or roofs (due to fork lift "incidents") are easy to replicate. The metal running boards were of reasonable thickness.
All of these were reasons why some modelers of the early 1950s viewed the introduction of the Athearn and Varney plastic rolling stock, inexpensive and well detailed as they were, as something of a step backwards in the scale accuracy department. There was a real war against plastic for a long time.
If you enjoy building the older Athearn or Varney metal kits with wood floors, you might also enjoy seeking out the old style metal kits from Ullrich and Model Die Casting.
Dave Nelson
kasskabooseNice cars. Where you get them?
Hi kasskaboose,
I found them on eBay just doing a search for HO freight cars. That's where I get all my golden oldies.
They are often quite cheap which is a bonus, and there are often several cars in the same listing which makes the shipping relatively cheap too. Not all the old cars are cheap of course.