Nostalgia Time: AHM's "Funeral Sales" and "Roundhouse Rubble"

[Jetrock]

Heck, that's what the $1 box at train shows are for...digging around for usable bits in the rubble! The deals are still out there for those with eagle eyes and the ability to scrounge and improvise.

[IRONROOSTER]

I remember when AHM got out of O scale. I bought a bunch of freight cars for $2 a piece. All new in their boxes. I still have them, unused. I changed scales to S before I had a chance to use them. I keep them just in case I change scales again.
Enjoy
Paul

[Anonymous]

Maybe if we all got together and bombarded the model train makers with letters urging them to have these types of sales they might give in. I'm willing...

trainluver1

[cacole]

I remember seeing those advertisements, but I didn't even have $10 to spare back in those days because I was in the Army as a lowly enlisted swine. My monthly pay was around $57, so trains were out of the question. I could barely afford to buy a copy of Model Railroader magazine at the PX and drool over the advertisements.

[Doug Goulbourn]

Dave,
I remember those days well. If only someone would invent a time machine!

Doug

[dknelson]

OK kids gather round the geezer as he spins a true story about how things were back in the day -- so we are talking roughly 1965 to late 1970s here.
AHM was Associated Hobby Manufacturers which was an importer that brought in the Rivarossi engines such as the Y6-b 2-8-8-2, the SP cab forward, the Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0, NKP berkshire, UP Big Boy and so on. Also the Fairbanks Morse C Liner, Pennsy GG1, and so on
They had deals called "Funeral Sale" where you'd get 3 for the price of 1 "lightly damaged" locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, and structures. So three standard passenger cars would be $3.98 -- maybe the trucks would be broken. Or three box cars for $1.98, and perhaps the horn hooks would be broken off, or a brake wheel missing.
Or you could get three N&W Y6-b 2-8-8-2s for the price of one, meaning $35.
This was all "as is" no returns, no warranty, no nothing.

Sometimes only the packaging was damaged. Sometimes there was evidence that the container holding the trains had gotten wet, perhaps even in salt water, and there was corrosion damage to the steeel wheels or a motor. Sometimes it looked like AHM might have raided the item for spare parts. Sometimes a detail or two was broken off, or a scratch marred the paint. Sometimes the engine did not run real great. But since you had three, with some tinkering you could as a rule get two perfect engines for the price of one, plus a nice supply of spare parts.
I mostly ordered the freight cars and passenger cars -- and who cared if the trucks or wheels were missing since 1) they tended to be the weakest part of AHM stuff anyway and 2) AHM had a parts catalog and spare parts were surprisingly cheap

Anyway they also had something called "Roundhouse Rubble" where for $10 you'd get a HUGE box of train stuff that was deemed just a bit too damaged for the Funeral Sale. As a kid on a budget who loved to tinker this my friends was hog heaven. I remember one box (remember, $10). The boxes were the size of maybe 3 shoe boxes, filled with trains wrapped in paper. One box had an SP cab forward with some front details missing and no tender trucks; an Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0 with no motor at all, an "economy" USRA Pacific (the kind with no valve gear) with a slightly wobbly wheel and a tender taken from a different engine entirely; an FM C Liner where the front truck was partly broken off, an NKP Berkshire missing most of its front detail including the pilot, two NYC Hudson shells without boiler fronts, and a boiler to a Y6-b 2-8-8-2. All that for $10.
Another Roundhouse Rubble had a whole bunch (4 maybe?) of FM C Liners, a Bowker 2-4-0 which ran fine, a Reno 4-4-0 which also ran fine, an IHB 0-8-0 that needed some wiring to the motor, a whole bunch of motors some of which ran OK, some structures, a complete tender to a Y6-b, and other stuff which I now forget. Not as great a deal as that first one, but still quite a deal.

I know that TrainWorld (I think) offers a box of busted stuff for $99 -- well I tried one and believe me it was real junk and nothing like the deal that Roundhouse Rubble was. Only now and then at the "junk" table at William K Walthers plant in Milwaukee have i seen such deals as one could get from AHM's Funeral Sale and Roundhouse Rubble.
End of story.
Dave Nelson