Entire hobby shops cater to us junk men. I lived near one shop, clearly on its last legs, that had a large supply of derelict inventory. The dusty old stuff on the shelves was tempting, but those cardboard boxes on the floor - ah, now we're talking gourmet junk. I remember snapping up a box of 30 seriously busted HO plastic freight cars for $10. Of the perhaps seven salvageable cars, the most promising was a nearly-mint Athearn C&NW boxcar, but it had one end smashed in. A Lackawanna car in the same color was unrepairable, but it did have one end intact. With great care I sawed and filed and sanded and glued and touched up the paint and when the project was done I proudly showed my handiwork to a friend, who pointed out the obvious: I'd just spent hours of work on an imperfect Athearn box car I could have bought new for $3.
That way of thinking profoundly misses the point.
Like Dr. Frankenstein, we pick over the cadavers of other modeler's failed projects in the hopes of bringing our own monsters to life. Like jackals and buzzards, we follow unlucky modelers around, snatching at their leavings: doomed engine conversions, abandoned craftsman kits, ill-advised superdetailing projects, laughable efforts at kitbashing - we scavenge them one and all, hoping that sweat equity will give us that outrageous bargain we live for.
We don't scavenge from fellow junk men, though. They never discard anything!
We become junk men the same way some people become drug addicts: they hook us when we're young. I blame the old Associated Hobby Manufacturers (AHM). Back in the ‘60s, AHM would advertise "Funeral Sales" of mildly damaged HO goods, three for the price of one. These were outrageous bargains, since AHM prices were rock-bottom to begin with, and for the time the quality was decent. You were all but assured of ending up with one, maybe two, perhaps even three fully working models.
If you were really in the know - AHM didn't advertise this much - they offered what they called "Roundhouse Rubble." Now this was junk, and I swallowed their bait early and often. For $10 AHM would send a big box crammed with trains so defective they were ashamed to sell them in the Funeral Sale. And if you ordered enough Roundhouse Rubble deals, eventually you might have enough fragments to create, say, a Nickel Plate Berkshire or an SP cab-forward that ran, well, almost OK, for-as you'd keep trying to convince yourself-practically nothing. The leftovers and debris and failures were so much lagniappe. AHM warned that you could not get Roundhouse Rubble trains to work unless you were "a genius." Well if AHM wanted to call me a genius who was I to disagree? I got addicted ... then my supplier disappeared.
It seems there are fewer such dangerous opportunities today. Sure, one mail order dealer advertises a handyman's special at $99 a box, but a price that high lacks the essential sensation that you've just taken advantage of someone. Besides, I ordered one and it was doubly disappointing: the price was far too high for what you got, and the trains were just not shabby enough. An Athearn F unit with a loose sideframe is junk? Since when? Maybe they're selling to junk men, but they aren't creating any new ones.
A couple of years ago I had the ultimate junk man's opportunity. I went to a fellow's place of business to look at his late uncle's large (check that, huge) collection of old HO trains. This uncle had evidently spent about 45 years in a perpetual state of disorganized planning for the dream layout that never came. There were 15 or more large moving van boxes and crates literally crammed with trains. At some point every container had gotten soaking wet; the cardboard felt damp and smelled sour. Not all model boxes were wet, but all smelled, and all were very dirty. Some had mildewed into black, weblike, furry stuff.
As for the trains themselves, some were new to around 1985 based on the boxes, but most were museum pieces going back well into the 1940s. The old Walthers passenger car kits, with wood roofs and floors (now warped), punched metal sides (rusted), and cast lead "details." Unbuilt or partly built craftsman kits. Tru-Scale roadbed with brass rail by the (wet) boxful. Tons of Plasticville toy structures and, oddly, just as many complex Campbell and Suydam structure kits. Metal freight car kits, with chipped paint. Those old 79 cent Kurtz-Kraft boxcar kits (astonishing in their detail when new, and still impressive today) in their cheap plastic bag packaging from well before 1960. I couldn't count how many Athearn Hustlers, rubber band drives long since disintegrated. Civil War to Amtrak era, eastern electrics to western diesels, Midwestern interurbans, Northern Pacific, Amtrak, C&NW, UP, PRR, ATSF, Milwaukee Road; this guy didn't care. Steam locomotives, often missing siderods or tenders or wheels. Rusted Marnold powerpacks; anything steel was rusted. Dozens of Gem and Tenshodo switch machines, all ruined by water. I won't even try to describe the condition (much less the odor) of the old Strombecker wood and cardstock locomotives.
It was like a dream, a very strange dream. A junk man's dream.
I didn't have much time, maybe an hour, and my hands grew filthy (and numb from the damp) as I merely skimmed the surface in going through the boxes. The nephew had one condition: it had to be sold as a unit, no picking and choosing. I knew at once that half, maybe more would have to be thrown out, including some of the most potentially interesting items. I was willing to take my chances, for here were projects enough to last a junk man's lifetime. I offered $1000 on the spot.
Which was promptly rejected. The uncle spent a fortune on these trains and the nephew wanted a good percentage of it back regardless of condition. I astonished myself by declining to change my bid and left, dejected. Had I lost my touch? Was I maybe, finally, an ex-junk man?
Nah. I bought some of the stuff at the next swap meet from the guy who did buy it. Dave Nelson
Here's some photos ( before and after ) of a junk Hobbytown E7. It's pilot was broken off, etc. I paid $4.00 for it. I replaced pilot with plow type and chaged to angle number boards. New paint job. It's no prize winner (P2K's look much better), but the old gal sure can haul a train!
Also shown in the second photo is a bachmann caboose I repaired and painted to CB&Q.
The Athearn Geep was purchased recently for $8.00. Nothing wrong with its flywheel drive. I painted it for CB&Q while ignoring the dynamic brakes which Burlington did not have on such units.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Great post. Thanks for taking the time to compose it. I got a good chuckle out of it.
Regards
Ed
Hello Group, my name's Ken and I'm a Junk Man.
**Responding chorus of "Hi Ken!" **
I, too, find treasure in others' throwaway traincars. Half of the gondolas in my steel mill are recycled Athearn blueboxes. It's amazing how some metal wheels and a good set of Kaydees will give one of those guys a new lease on life...
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
I've got 3 Athearn Milwaukee F7A's. The oldest is from a box o' trains my Mom found at a yard sale back in the early 60's. Next is one I bought new about that time, an old Hi-F rubber band drive model. Finally, I found another at a train show for $12 last year. And you can add to that a B-unit I got on eBay. All are the pale gray color that Athearn used to use.
I gutted the Hi-F drive, installed Kadees and window glazing, and had one dummy. The oldest engine was the only one of my old collection that would run anymore, so I put in a decoder and headlights, plus the Kadees. The train show one wasn't bad - it just needed couplers, and the B-unit was a dummy anyway.
They're horrible. They growl like gear-driven jungle beasts. They run poorly, and I just love 'em.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Deja vu all over again. Ah do believes that's one of the same cabooseI refer to in my post on the Prototypes forum!
Yes, great minds DO think alike, when it comes to Junk!
Are ye also a fan of the TLC program Junkyard Wars? (or the original BBC Scrapheap Challenge) I figure that program has basically just one rule: anything based on hydraulics will look COOL, but will lose in the end!
Dave, I started out buy junk because I did not know better. But I like to fix things or make junk run like the good stuff. I was bashed somewhat from a person here that sort of told me I am not that bright (he is right) and I was wasting my time and money.
I have had more fun fixing the old Athearn BB engines, up grading the cheap Tyco (old Dutch Hoppers 25 of them now) Life Like and Bachmann stuff than the new BLI engines I bought new.
Guess I am a junkman as well. But my junk runs great now. Need some help fixing a PK BL2 I am your man.
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
Good, we need people like you...so we can get rid of our junk!
I had this box of cheap HO junk (broken Tyco, Bachmann, AHM, Lionel, Life-Like, Model Power stuff) taking up space in my closet. I mean, I don't think any of you would be caught dead with that stuff on your layout. So at a recent train show I sold the whole box for about $7.
I also got rid of a bunch of recycled flextrack by bundling it up with masking tape and selling the whole bundle for $10. I could have thrown it away but instead I got $10 for it and someone gets to re-use it on their layout.
I sometimes resemble that!
By various means, fair and foul, I have acquired a trash can junk box full of American prototype rolling stock, most of it yard sale rejects. Thanks to my choice of prototype, none of it will ever have a legitimate place on my layout.
Some of it will get to my grandson, sooner or later. Some of the rest will be kitbashed into unlikely freelance psuedo-Japanese units to be operated by the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo. A very few pieces have sentimental appeal and will be retained, probably in a display case. As for the rest...
Anybody out there building a rolling stock refurbishing facility (or scrap yard?) Maybe I'll do a diorama..
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Yup, I am also a bit of a junk collector. Some examples are:
my first junker purchase; an old AHM C-LINER which was in pieces and missing the motor brushes. I gave it some Bowser DC-71 brushes, so it works now, but it will never run well. It was also my first super-detail project, and all the detail parts are either thin bubble plastic or magnet wire, but it doesn't look great.
Another one is my extra Rivarossi E8. I've found everything but the 3 axles for the power truck in the junk drawers of Hobbyland, which is also where my C-LINER came from. I stuck some Athearn dummy unit wheels in and use it as a dummy unit.
Probably my most recent "junk" purchase was my Athearn Hustler at a garage sale. The thing is missing a horn, didn't have any rubber bands, had a weird coil spring on the motor for electrical pickup, the wheels had a thin coating of rust, and it was completely filled with steal wool shavings. Works great now, because I took the time to fix it up.
In the future, I'll most likely end up buying more things like these, because it's what I do.
_________________________________________________________________
Man. When I first clicked on this topic I thought you were going to admit to us all that Jimmy Hoffa was buried in your back yard or something... Oh well.
The fact is, you're not alone... I'm also a junk car buyer. And like you and others that do this, I'm looking to save a buck as well as use them for spare parts. I salvage the doors, brake wheels, cat walks, trucks, frames, etc off of them to keep my fleet going and looking sharp. Once in a great while I'll come across one that only needs something like trucks or minor repair and I end up with another nice $2.00 box car in my collection that would have cost me $10.00 or more if I'd bought it new.
Tracklayer
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Quite a bit of my rolling stock was once someone's "junk." Of course after removing the original paint, fitting Kadees, metal wheels, and a new paint job, nobody can tell!
The best though is an old Tyco Alco four-axle Century-series that sits outside the enginehouse. It didn't run well when I found it, but at least it was free. Currently dead, it's been repainted Penn Central, and weathered quite a bit. While I was at it, it got new horns, and handrails from an Athearn unit. Since it doesn't run, it's "Tyco-ness" isn't an issue. It does, though, get shuffled around from time to time as other units come in for repairs.
And yes, I do look at the "junk lots" at train shows...and don't usually bother with the "new" stuff. I figure, if I can find (and fix) a piece of junk for minimal cost, why not?
When I was in HO I was more of a junk collector than I am in N.
However, I'm always on the market for junk N Scale Minitrix PRR engines; doesn't matter if they work or not. Several "junk" engines gave their "organs" to produce this H10s on the right:
Modeling the Rio Grande Southern First District circa 1938-1946 in HOn3.
Here's a picture of a scene that includes quite a bit of recycled junk.
For starters, I did get a little publicity several months back in Jim Hediger's Workshop column for recycling some old tank cars. My Workshop item involved two tank cars from the scrap box. The shell of a 65 foot tank car was cut into two pieces and was the main component of the upright, twin storage tank in the background. The heavily weathered CB&Q company service tank car was made from a standard sized tanker shell plus some parts salvaged from the 65' car and also new trucks. Later, I repaired the frame of the Union 76 tank car using a piece I cut from the 65' tank car frame.
Other items in the scene include: A Highway bridge I made from pieces removed from two old Atlas brass rail bridges. The trailing F-unit is an F-2 made from an old Varney shell (50 cents at train show) mounted on an old Athearn dummy frame ($1.00 at train show). The coal hopper is a cheap Tyco CB&Q hopper with new trucks and weathering. The MKT boxcar was part of a group of junk cars I bought. The GP-7 was a severe basket case Tenshodo model. The Pacific was one of several Mantua models I purchased at cheap prices and restored. The 4-6-2 is has not been detailed for CB&Q but it will do for my operating sessions. The RPO is a salvaged metal and wood (JC Models) car from back when.
I am convinced that fixing up junk is a most enjoyable part of model railroading. This aspect of the hobby could use more attention. You can expand the variety of models on the layout without spending too much money.
Dave,
Quite an enjoyable read indeed!
Will we be getting any more installments of "Confessions from a junk man"?
Thanks,
Ryan
Ryan BoudreauxThe Piedmont Division Modeling The Southern Railway, Norfolk & Western & Norfolk Southern in HO during the merger eraCajun Chef Ryan