Hi!
I have a bunch of Athearn Blue Box Ready to Run pieces of Rolling Stock. When did they make these?
I have a picture of one below.
Many thanks, Ted
IIRC, I would say mid-60’s. They used a similar light blue box for their ‘steam era’ box car kits in he late 60’s/early 70’s.
Jim
At first I thought that light blue box might be from an Athearn train set but the HO Seeker website shows similar boxes for RTR, just as Jim mentions above. HO Seeker punts on the date but my hunch is also the 1960s, probably the later part of the 60s.
http://www.hoseeker.org/gallery/index.php?album=athearnmaingallery1%2Fathearnrtr
By the way in the 1962 catalog the flat car with boat was $1.98 RTR and $1.69 as a kit!
http://www.hoseeker.net/AthearnBrochuresAds/Brochure%201962%20pg6.jpg
Dave Nelson
I worked in a hobby shop in the late 60’s and early 70’s as a young teen. Athearn had stopped production of these but we still had a few in stock.
I would have to pull out some mags, but I recall ads for them until about 1966 or 67.
I believe they started right after the plastic kits started, mid 50’s, but the first versions came in yellow boxes.
Sheldon
Built many Athearn cars with the old Blue Box kits well into the eighties. Started back modeling in the early seventies, and the Blue Box was standard.
Philcal,
The OP was asking about Athearn RTR cars, not kits. They offered RTR versions during the late 50’s and early 60’s, then discontinued the RTR versions until the current “Ready to Roll” line was created.
Sheldon
I’ve never seen them before.
You are too young, and from what I remember, they were produced in much smaller quantities than the kits.
Sheldon
The kits was still available and cost less then the RTR cars.
However,They was other RTR cars available from Cox,Varney,Mantua and Lindbergh.There was factory painted “RTR” brass passenger cars as well.
There may have been others as well but,nonbrass RTR didn’t go over to well back then.
Yes, the kits were about a dollar less than the RTR versions.
Sheldon
Hey Sheldon,
Do you remember in about 1968-1969 Cox offering “train sets” with the equipment being RTR Athearn?
As I remember they only did that a short time as Tyco, Bachmann, and a few others blew them out the door with their pricing.
Bought several Tyco train sets at Christmas 1968 for $8.88 each, they included an F7 in Santa Fe freight, 3 freight cars, a caboose, oval of track and a power pack. Anytime after that if I had a friend that wanted to get started in trains or if someone had a son that wanted to get started in trains I would give them one of those sets. And these were the ones that were still made in Japan, not the Taiwan “specials”, AKA total junk…
Mark
Yes, I remember those, the first shop I worked in sold them, since Athearn had recently stopped sets and RTR in favor of the COX deal.
Sheldon
Keep them in good condition. They are getting rare and from that picture it looks like it should be headed for or at least preserved for a model railroad museum.
Too young?
Whoa, I"m not feeling too young at 51 but I don’t remember those either. I didn’t start buying Athearn stuff until the early/mid 1970’s in my teens.