I have been going through my vast collection of old locomotives and rolling stock - I’ve been collecting for about 50 years, so you can imagine all the stuff I have…
I have to tell you, I am still in love with a lot of the old AHM rolling stock, and Rivarossi locomotives.
Other than the huge wheel flanges - designed to run on just about any track, including the famous “carpet central” railroads - these locos run flawlessly to this day. The rolling stock - I have no idea who made most of them - were very well detailed for the day, and even look good on your layout today.
My new layout under construction is using code 100 rail just for this reason, so I can run my old trains…
What are your thoughts about the old stuff? The AHM and Rivarossi items put shame to the other manufacturers of the era, except maybe for the old brass imports.
Nothing wrong with that had the same stuff years ago liked AHM better than Tyco and Bachmann but I still ran them Athearn only the LHS had them but before I could drive nobody took me to the LHS in Charlotte NC that was the only place that had Hobby Shops that sold the good stuff.
When AHM was a new outfit they posed a real challenge to the hobby because the wheel flanges were even in the early 1960s a step backwards. The comparatively detailed underframes, and crisp lettering, made the freight cars a worthy alternative to Athearn and they were often sold at astoundingly low prices.
What was frustrating was that if you snipped off the couplers and body mounted KDs, and then tried to put in replacement wheels with smaller flanges, almost no make of replacement wheel really rolled well in the AHM trucks. It was a proprietary axle point I guess.
So I tolerated the AHM wheels as a result even though they were seriously undersized and were not 33" wheels. They also picked up dirt more than any other wheel I have seen.
When replacing the plastic wheels on some Train Miniature cars (or maybe Train Miniature of Illinois to be more exact), quite by chance I learned that the Train Miniature/TM of I wheels did work in AHM trucks. I had been busily discarding them on a routine basis because they were often defective (bent axles for example). Thereafter I saved the best TM wheelsets for my AHM cars. Now I just replace the trucks completely on my remaining AHM cars because I have run out of the TM wheelsets (which were not great wheels anyway ).
There were actually some interesting cars in the AHM line, and some interesting paint schemes in their standard line of cars too. I treasure a 40’ boxcar lettered for Atlantic & Danville, an obscure Virginia railroad that I knew about because a guy named Adolf W Arnold had a sort of newsletter about it that anybody could get for free just by writing him and asking for it. MR once mentioned the newsletter and I decided to get it.
A lot of good AHM rolling stock is till floating around in the used market. I regularly replace the car wheels with Intermountain wheels. Then they can be used on the modern track sizes. The loco’s wheels are a different matter. There isn’t a replacement for the metal pizza cutter flanges that most have.
I was a big AHM/Rivarossi loco fan back in the 60’s! While in the Airforce in 1966 and stationed at Eglin AFB in Florida, I journeyed one Saturday to Pensacola to its hobby shop and bought my treasured Big Boy. They had a special sale on AHM trains and the Big Boy was $39.95. Later I bought the Y6B for $49.95. Then the cab forward, etc. I loved the articulateds and had no money for such motive power in brass.
I did turn down the flanges, using my lathe, on most of the articulated AHM loco’s in the 1980’s… made them look a lot less clunky.
I, ultimately, had almost every steamer offered by AHM by 1975. The detail was very good for the price back then. They ran OK for what they cost. Actually, I have had brass that ran worse. What few diesels I bought were all the super Atlas offerings of the 80’s which still shine in my memory as the very first smooth as velvet running HO loco’s I ever owned.
I bought very little AHM rolling stock, but ran almost exclusively with the, now iconic, Athern blue box kits.
The worst garbage on earth back then was a toss up between Model Power and Bachmann. Bachmann sort of crawled out of its hole, didn’t it?
All my old standard gauge HO stuff is packed away now.
I respectfully beg to differ with that statement: Back in the sixties, I put together a train of Pennsy passenger cars (about a dozen or so), and replaced the AHM wheels with the pizza-cutter flanges with Kadee 36" wheels, and found that they not only out-performed the originals, but even today will out-roll darned near every other make of wheelset and or trucks out there and still do! Oh, yeah, and I also body-mounted Kadee #5s too.
I just bought 19 AHM 3 bay covered hoppers. When I started to replace the wheel sets I soon discovered that Bachmann 33" wheel sets that I had on hand did not fit into the original trucks. The next logical step was to get out the Reboxx truck tuner, but it wouldn’t touch the axle holes. It just spun.(Yes I made sure I was turning it in the right direction!). So, I got out a small drill (somewhere around a #60 I think) and drilled a shallow hole in the center of the axle hole. I only went in about 1/32". The result was that the Bachmann wheel sets performed magnificently, proving the point I think that GMCRAIL made about the original wheels having somewhat blunt axles. Saved me the expense of replacing the trucks.
I also body mounted Kadee #5s. I had to use up the supply I had on hand - once their gone I will go with whiskers. I have some 1/8th inch styrene tube on order so I can get rid of the pins that hold the trucks in place and use proper screws. That will also allow me to take some of the wobble out of the trucks. Adding weight was necessary of course but fortunately the car tops pop right off. The tops got glued back on because most of them were warped a bit. I made the stupid mistake of gluing the first five car’s coupler boxes on but I smartened up for the rest.
The printing is quite crisp. The only thing that I really didn’t like was the way AHM molded the grab irons. Maybe some day I will pull a Doctor Wayne and replace them with wire. For now I will use my often quoted strategy of simply running the train faster so you can’t see the details![:o)][swg]
All in all I figure that the cars will have cost me about $9.00 each to get them into decent operating form. I’m happy![Y]
Gary, I agree that the passenger cars (mine were PRR too!) were different and once you filed down the cast on brake shoes, Kadee 36" wheels rolled nicely in the trucks, presumably Rivarossi. The slight increase in car height I could live with. I was commenting on the early 1960s freight cars which were not Rivarossi but, if I recall correctly, Pocher and a different animal. If we had had the truck tuner back then perhaps I could have made them work but even visually the axle size and ends on those Pocher originated cars looked distinctive.
I have remotored some of my old Rivarossi/AHM with large flanges. The flanges haven’t been a problem and they stand up pretty well to handling by youngsters. Also, replaced the wheels in the coaches to metal wheelsets to add lights.
AHM had some advantages back then over the other brands of cars out there. Some of their cars were dead on accurate. For example, AHM had the only accurate PS-1 boxcar on the market until several years ago. It even came with separately applied ladders. Other than the poor trucks, it’s only other problem was I never saw it available in anything other than a foobie C&O scheme.
Are we going to start this again? [(-D] Remember,they were,more detailed,than other’s, open radiator grille’s,blah blah, The Infamous,spring drive?[yeah]