I remember as a kid, thumbing through Model Railroader mags, and near the front, seeing a two page ad crammed with tiny pictures of stuff for sale from some wholesale hobby house.
One DRAWING that always grabbed my attention almost as much as a naked woman would have, was of a diesel with a chop nose, and with two six wheel trucks…so it’d be a “GP or SD something” right?
What set it so apart from all the other pictures of its type, was the very small space between those two sets of trucks–so it almost looked like it was ALL WHEELS underneath.
Do not ask me why this struck me as so “sexy” (I’m sure some psychologist would have a field day over that) but sadly I didn’t have the funds back then, to BUY whatever diesel that was, in spite of how its price was only something like EIGHTEEN DOLLARS. My memory has it as an ATLAS product, in HO (of course, its not available anymore, and seemed to disappear from those ads, around 1965)
But: for curiosity sake, does anyone know which diesel would fit such a description? Could there even be a “well seasoned” modeller in here, who OWNED one?
{edited shortly after: I googled “parts of a diesel locomotive” so I could see what it is, that hangs down between the front and rear trucks–being the fuel tank, which no doubt all of you already knew, but I didn’t–so it is THIS that is extremely compact, on whatever diesel this inquiry is about. Most often that portion is at least as long as the truck frames, but in this case, only about HALF as big.}
In EMD terminology, six wheel trucks would make it and SD unit…
It could also be an Alco unit, which would be an RSD or RSC unit (depending on model)
That could describe an SD24, which was made by Atlas (and Con-Cor), and I have 4 such units in my possession. The (real) SD35 wasn’t introduced until 1964, and judging by the time frame of the ads, I’d rule that out. Besides, did Atlas make an SD35 in the mid-60’s? Not sure…
It could also describe an Alco RSD4/5 or an RSD15, but the RSD15 is a longer unit.
The SD24’s had some fairly short fuel tanks, as did the SD7’s, SD9’s, and SD18’s. They were all fairly short wheelbase engines. If I understand my source correctly, only the SD18’s came from the factory with low noses, the SD24&#
Fairbanks Morse built a switch engine with a very small fuel tank at around that time, too, but I don’t remember the locomotive’s designation or who may have made an HO scale model of it.
The hobby shop that had those advertisements was probably America’s Hobby Center in New York City. Whatever happened to them? Is it now Trainland/Trainworld? I used to order stuff from AHC.
Hi guys…great response, and I think the mystery is solved! The thing I’m the most thrown by, however, is my guess at the TIME involved. I wasn’t “a kid” anymore, in 1975, when Atlas seems to have released that SD35, at $25, which fits the description to a tee. (Well, maybe still a kid AT HEART–which model railroading can help bring about!)
And it “feels” quite right, that it was a big house like the “AHC” someone above remembers, who made a DRAWING of that diesel, for their ads, quite possibly with the fuel tanks depicted as even shorter than a photo would have had it.
I knew I could count on you guys here to solve this. How many of you would pore through those tiny ads, back when it didn’t strain our eyes so much, DROOLING over the stuff shown?
Now maybe we should examine the psychology of how the mere sight of a diesel silhouette drawing can elicit what could be mistaken as a SEXUAL response? I find the same thing happens when viewing the dull green of a Pullman standard passenger car, or a well-weathered but still readable Southern Pacific boxcar, the dull brown background broken by “caution yellow” signs like “DF” in a flying wing icon.
Could I have been conceived in a FREIGHT YARD in 1946???
This thread got my interest so I pulled the April 1965 issue of Model Railroader from the basement.The two page AHC ad has two rough drawings of road switchers,a Tyco GP-20 and an Athearn GP-30. The GP-20 has a low short hood and a small fuel tank,the trucks look long and it’s hard to see the axles. And all for $9.88. Oliver I wonder if the Tyco GP-20 is the one you remember ? Back in the late 1970’s AHC was the first mail order house i bought from because of their good ads. Haven’t seen an America’s Hobby Center ad for at least three years. Joe
Hi there…I’m at my WINTER home, now, in California, so don’t have access to any railroad mags other than the last couple years, sent to me, here…in Canada, I’ve got a TON of them, going back to the PRE-COLOR days, even to the fifties, when I thought my Lionel train set was hot stuff. (With the “cattle loader” accessory, jiggling little plastic cows through a maze and into a stock car, then right back out again. I guess it never dawned on anyone, that it didn’t make much OPERATING sense, to do that. But it was a pretty cool effect, back in those days when movie monsters included “dinosaurs” being guys dressed up in a slightly torn TYRANNOSAURUS REX latex suit, making growling noises.)
Anyway, I can’t check on any of those old AHC ads, til next April…meantime, I’ll do some Googling, to see if somewhere on the net, I can find a GP20 pictured. But the SD35 someone kindly posted earlier, sure looks like what I remember. And now, of course, I’ll also be playing INTERNET DETECTIVE to FIND one of those–hopefully with the “virtually indestructable grab irons made of nylon” still intact, as the Atlas ad states. I suspect I’ll have to pay a lot more than $25 for it, if it still RUNS.
Well, my hopes that mentioning it here, would result in 6 people OFFERING me one they don’t want anymore, didn’t pan out, darn it.
I guess my best bet will be to try looking for one in Ebay or like that (so far, the most adventurous I’ve been that way, is to get used BOOKS from Amazon–which worked out a lot better than I expected.)
Wow, what a great hint! I see you live just over the hump from me (Kelowna)–but I hightailed it out of there at the beginning of November, when my toes started to curl up, from the frosty weather. Only problem: I clik on the two “urls” you kindly provided, and got to see two items that fit the bill alright…but have NO IDEA how to go from THERE…I tried “contacting seller” to suggest we do something over the PHONE, as I’m so “low tech”…but you have to be an EBAY MEMBER or something, to do even that. Not much TIME right now, to teach myself to be an eBay freak. I’d LOVE to get my hands on that Pennsy version, as its mostly BLACK, which would make altering it into the paint scheme of the “F & A” (Ferrago & Aquandary) which is a shameless steal from the Southern Pacific “black widow” colours, pretty easy. Hope its not the only one in the universe.
sigh.
(added a bit later: okay, I figured out how to cheat my way in, sorta…entered eBay as a “guest” and just paid the amount you need to, to simply BUY the thing…here I was thinking this item no longer existed in the universe–last thing I’d want to do is quibble about a buck or two on the price…although I suppose that’s the whole FUN of doing the eBay bidding thing, right? Only thing that threw me was the cost to GET it to me…but I’m over the shellshock of that, after buying a USED BOOK on Amazon for only 50 cents, but then having to pay seven bucks SHIPPING on top of that. I’ll come back here to report on the outcome, assuming that in 10 days or so, the item shows up. We’ll JUST SEE if the “virtually indestructable nylon handrails” handled the last 25 years or so of jostling around from hobby shop to wherever, ending up in some old warehouse where the seller of this thing found it.)
I stopped in my LHS earlier, and was thinking about SD24’s. Lo and behold, they had a box with a couple dozen older Atlas models, including several SD24’s (2 or 3 SF, one or 2 Southern Railway, and 3 or 4 undecorated), all in the $30-40 price range. I want to say I saw an SD35 or 2, but wouldn’t swear my life on it without checking again. They also had a pile of the recently retooled (Atlas?) SD24’s in stock, as well, in various roads.
If you’re interested, email me off-list (don’t PM me, as I rarely check those; I check my email almost daily) and I’ll forward contact info for the shop. I asked, and they DO mailorders. This shop does trains exclusively, and they do quite a bit of business.
Didn’t some company do a retooled version of the SD35 recently?
Wow, what a great hint! I see you live just over the hump from me (Kelowna)–but I hightailed it out of there at the beginning of November, when my toes started to curl up, from the frosty weather. Only problem: I clik on the two “urls” you kindly provided, and got to see two items that fit the bill alright…but have NO IDEA how to go from THERE…I tried “contacting seller” to suggest we do something over the PHONE, as I’m so “low tech”…but you have to be an EBAY MEMBER or something, to do even that. Not much TIME right now, to teach myself to be an eBay freak. I’d LOVE to get my hands on that Pennsy version, as its mostly BLACK, which would make altering it into the paint scheme of the “F & A” (Ferrago & Aquandary) which is a shameless steal from the Southern Pacific “black widow” colours, pretty easy. Hope its not the only one in the universe.
sigh.
(added a bit later: okay, I figured out how to cheat my way in, sorta…entered eBay as a “guest” and just paid the amount you need to, to simply BUY the thing…here I was thinking this item no longer existed in the universe–last thing I’d want to do is quibble about a buck or two on the price…although I suppose that’s the whole FUN of doing the eBay bidding thing, right? Only thing that threw me was the cost to GET it to me…but I’m over the shellshock of that, after buying a USED BOOK on Amazon for only 50 cents, but then having to pay seven bucks SHIPPING on top of that. I’ll come back here to report on the outcome, assuming that in 10 days or so, the item shows up. We’ll JUST SEE if the “virtually indestructable nylon handrails” handled the last 25 years or so of jostling around from hobby shop to wherever, ending up in some old warehouse where the seller o
Thanks for the offer…to show you what a DUNCE you are dealing with, here, I have no idea what “email me off list” means. In case it means I need to clik over your name here, and it allows me to send a normal email to you, I’ll TRY that, now, at least. But if that’s not it, I’ll need you to explain to Mr. LowTech here, what you meant.
Ah…I think I successfully sent a “normal” email out…then tried to do the same thing to “Pathfinder” to say thanks, but wasn’t able to. (so I’ll do it THIS way: thanks, pal)
