Posted 2 years ago
RVolskay
(22 items)
A few earliest Athearn kits, dating from 1948 through to about 1953. These were, as with most items of that day, wooden frames, with metal exterior. Athearn produced no locomotives prior to 1954 (not counting the limited run of the metal RDC models, which, although powered, were not locomotives), when the famous F7 plastic models were released under the globe trade name.
The Athearn kits are my favorites. Don't see the early models like these often.
They are quite unusual, and getting very hard to find (even on eBay) in this condition. I started collecting the familiar yellow box kits, back in the late 70's, but was making the novice's mistake of assembling them. I didn't intend to become a collector, but, when I started finding these "ancient" kits, I eagerly snapped them up. Research into the pages of the model train magazines has certainly been a tremendous source of intormation, on them.
I neglected to mention the Timken Roller Freight kits/boxes, in the first photo. These particular kits were done in 1949, and were the first brightly colored boxes, in the Athearn line. Each box top was "custom matched" for the color of the kit it contained. The silver car was discontinued sometime in the early 50's (this is based on the boxes I've been able to find them in, but the red and the yellow cars both survived up to the plastic car era. At the changeover to plastic cars, only the yellow car was kept in production. It survived into the early blue box era, a considerable run time, for any freight car scheme.