Is there a list anywhere of all the road numbers for Athearn blue box kits for map boxcars? I would like to find as many as possible without duplicating road numbers and know which cars I haven’t found yet. Thanks.
Cory
In the “old days” Athearn kits normally came with just one number available for each railroad. Later some companies like Bev-Bel bougth Athearn undec kits and custom decorated them, and they may have offered ATSF cars in multiple road numbers. It may be in recent years Athearn “ready to roll” cars, many of which are based on the old blue box kits, have been offered in multiple numbers…or maybe not??
I started to answer this with a 30 page list of boxcar numbers, but then I realized you are asking for road numbers of Athearn HO models, and I guess corresponding model catalog numbers, not for prototype information.
The prototype information is truly brain-boggling, since the map boxcars came in straight-line and curved-line map versions, and the maps were on the opposite side of cars with name train slogans, which come in a set of early version slogans and later version slogans, as new name trains were added to the fleet, and older trains discontinued or dropped from the advertising program.
I wonder if you might get more response in the general forum rather than the prototype information forum?
The “Standard Guide to Athearn Model Trains” book has some info, particularly on pages180-182 about ATSF boxcars offered. As I suspected, I don’t see any evidence of them offering multiple numbers in the sense that they had three or five identical cars available at the same time, but with different numbers on them. They would produce say an ATSF car with “El Capitan” slogan and one road number for 10-20 years, then upgrade the graphics a little and maybe change to another number at that time.
However, for a while they offered a Santa Fe “Grand Canyon” slogan boxcar that was no. 145385 on one side and no.145386 on the other…
[;)]