Happy birthday sir and congratulations on having the self control at age 50 to enjoy just ONE beer!
The engine you have is a model of the Fairbanks Morse "C Liner" cab locomotive. In its time the FM C Liner was remarkable because Fairbanks Morse offered it in a variety of horsepower ratings, some of them quite high for the early 1950s, igher than what EMD offered. Rivarossi, the Italian model railroad firm, first made an HO model in the late 1950s, and I think Polk Hobbies was the importer. AHM (Associated Hobby Manufacturers) later became a major importer of Rivarossi stuff, including some interesting steam locomotives like the UP Big Boy and New York Central Hudson, but they also arranged for Rivarossi to license some eastern European firms to make knockoffs more cheaply. AHM would sometimes have astonishing sales where things like the C Liner might sell for $8. I can recall the after Christmas sales at Woolworths where they were practically giving the stuff away. $1 freight cars and that sort of thing
Anyway ,,, you are correct there is a rubber traction tire on one wheel of your engine. I recall only one truck is powered, but that traction tire gave it impressive pulling power. Unfortunately, for many years Rivarossi (and AHM) stubbornly insisted on wheel flangers that were so much bigger than anyone else's, and way bigger than even the oldest NMRA standards (they wanted their stuff to also sell in the kid's trainset market I guess) that it could only run on Code 100 track. Indeed even handspiked Code 100 would sometimes cause "clicking" noise as the flanges hit the spike heads. When Code 83 started to become popular many guys found they had to retire their AHM stuff, you could put new wheels on the freight and passenger cars, but the flanges on locomotives were harder to fix and most gave up.
Thus AHM stuff is fairly plentiful at swap meets so if you need parts for your C Liner don't give up hope -- you might find a box full of old AHM at a swap meet selling for a few dollars. AHM and its manufacturer used the same chassis for its EMD BL-2 model, so it ran on incorrect FM trucks not EMD Blomberg trucks. But if you need parts and see an AHM BL-2, it might have the parts you need.
The motor and drive train on AHM engines was smooth and quiet when new, but the 3 pole motors did not offer very good slow speed performance and they tended to burn out under the abuse that kids gave their train sets. The one thing you could say about AHM back then is that they had a parts catalog that offered everything - and prices were reasonable. If something broke you could replace it pretty easily. Those days seem to be gone
A few other things. While the paint and lettering job on AHM diesels in the 1960s was pretty good, the Union Pacific did not, to my knowledge, own Fairbanks Morse C Liners. Relatively few railroads did. Also over the years the C Liner model went through various changes. Some had molded on grab irons, other had separate metal parts. Some had very accurate Fairbanks Morse trucks, others had simplified versions. There was a sort of round vent cover or something on the roof was is sometimes a separate part, other times molded in. The horns varied too. The one thing many modelers did -- if they changed to Kadee couplers from the hornhooks on the AHM engine (and those were some of the worst versions of hornhooks in my experience), the front coupler was changed to be body mounted and the huge gap in the front pilot was filled in with styrene. You were on your own trying to match the paint.
For a very brief time AHM offered a FM C Liner "B" unit. Those are NOT often seen at swap meets and I have no idea if they offered it in UP paint.
Dave Nelson
Thanks for the reply it would be more helpful if I had photos of the inderneath of the FM diesel,With the metal plates of so I can see where to put the gears and wheels,Thanks for your reply that helped me out.
Hi there and happy belated birthday!
AHM imported from various manufacturers. That one looks like a Rivarossi. I found the following on HOseeker:
https://hoseeker.net/AHMRivarossiassembly/ahmfmbl2pg4.jpg
and this:
https://hoseeker.net/AHMRivarossiassembly/ahmbuildersbiblepage104.jpg
Good luck!
Simon
Hello all well it's my 50th Birthday today I feel good gonna have me 1 beer later today,Anyway I got a box of ho trains from my friend he sent me the name on the.Boxes is called,Associated Hobby MFRS.Inc so I got a UP engine not sure what kind it is,But I am not sure how to make this engine run below are some photos I took of it.It shows the wheels and gears on iand it also has the little black,O rings for traction hoping somone here can help me out.To get this UP engine running.
https://ibb.co/55XHCgY
https://ibb.co/HC08hvn