Can anyone give me any information about a F-M C-Liner in IC passenger livery, HO scale, produced in the mid-1960’s? Odd thing is, I’ve been unable to find any indication that the prototype ever existed on IC’s roster.
I don’t have a picture of it. A friend was cleaning out his deceased Mother’s basement. He says when he was 12, he wanted an IC passenger diesel, and this was as close to an E unit he could find.
Sounds like an AHM item:
Ed
Yup, that’s odd. Myself, I can’t find any indication that Santa Fe ever owned a (sort of) copy of a B&O Pacific:
Back in the olden days, there were very few HO locomotives. And an awful lot of railroads. So some manufacturers tended to letter their models for railroads that didn’t have them. Especially steam. But diesels, too.
The 1967 AHM catalog shows the C liner lettered for Reading, New Haven, PRR, Santa Fe, Northern Pacific, Canadian National, NYC. Of these, Santa Fe and Northern Pacific didn’t have any.
Ed
#4022 was actually an E8 on the IC.
Sounds like maybe AHM wanted to model an E in all those road names, and ran into to some sort of licensing issue or something with EMD. So they came up with the idea to do a F-M instead. F-M was either out of business by then, or didn’t care.
I don’t think so. More likely random chance combined with “what paint scheme will sell”.
AHM was sort of an importer. The E was made by Rivarossi. The F-M was “someone else”. I’m pretty sure that the manufacturers chose any paint scheme they wanted and shipped the product to the US.
Rivarossi did the E in IC later. I counted three on Ebay right now. One is numbered 4022.
Ed
Yeah, most of the good IC stuff came along after I was out of the hobby. It was generally hard to find in the early to mid 1960’s. I had either an Atlas or Athearn (can’t remember which) IC GP (think it was a GP-30), and that was about it. I used to marvel at the guys in the magazine, who could paint and detail models to their liking.
Probably an Athearn GP35:
I thought it a rather elegant paint scheme.
Ed
AHM made that C-Liner in Reading yellow and green, tooo. The only true FM locos Reading had were Trainmasters. Never a C-Liner or anything, and certainly not in the second gen paint scheme.
–Randy
I don’t think AHM ever “made” anything. I think they were importers, bringing in product from various manufacturers. Which establishes, among other things, that one shouldn’t blame the manufacturer of the E8 for the problems with a C-liner.
Ed
Is AHM still with us today?
Yep, that was it. Somehow $14 sticks in my head. A lot of money for a 12 year old in 1965. I think that was the most expensive loco I had. The only other one I remember was a Pennsy F7, that was driven by a rubberband. I think it lasted a couple of weeks. I had a nice Walthers heavy weight Pullman in Tuscan Red to go with it. That was the extent of my passenger train.
Used to order stuff from a big mail order hobby shop in NYC. They always ran a big 2 page ad in MR every month. Had to clip out an order form and send in a money order. Different days and different ways.
I don’t recall AHM being a big player, I guess mainly because I haven’t thought of them until this thread. In that era, I recall Atlas and Athearn being the affordable products, and all the stuff with European names being expensive. The big thing then for adult modelers with money, was imported brass steam locomotives. Wasn’t there a Japanese company that’s specialty was brass steam?
Here’s a July 1971 price list for Athearn:
http://hoseeker.net/AthearnBrochuresAds/athearnpartslist1971pg1.jpg
HOSeeker is a great website for looking up and at old model train information.
Ed
What I remember about road names, is you could find Santa Fe Warbonnets at the corner toy store. Everything else you either had to go to a big hobby shop in the city, or mail order it.
I switched to N scale for awhile. First train set was a freight, pulled by a Santa Fe F7 Warbonnet. The brand name was Aurora. They didn’t call it N, it was marketed as “Postage Stamp Trains”. There was some European gauge that was compatible, but had different couplers. I recall trying to get that to work, because Aurora didn’t have any additional rolling stock. A couple of years later, other manufacturers started offering N.
AHM was a HUGE player in the early 70’s. They had all 3 major scales, everything com complete sets to individual cars and locos, structures of all sorts, figures, even track. Their catalog also had scale military vehicles and other things. It was a rather large book (not as big as Walthers, to be sure, but it was only the stuff THEY sold). Rivarossi and Pocher made most of the locos. They went under, only to reemerge essentially as IHC, which lasted for a number of years. Fairly big as well, but no longer selling Rivarossi-made locos. Some IHC locos were Frataschi, not sure about others, or their passenger cars. They used to have a 2 page spread in MR every month. So not a minor player at all. I always felt their stuff was a step above the train set Life Like and Tyco junk of the 70’s, not as good as Atlas/Roco.
–Randy
The older AHM and Rivarossi products sure look toy-like when you compare them to today’s models.
Pemco, not Frataschi, that’s who made a lot of the later stuff once AHM/IHC no longer sold Rivarossi.
Maybe by today’s standards they can be crude, but they were much nicer than any equivalent Tyco or Life Like product of the day. I still have my stable of Virginia and Truckee old timer steam locos, haven’t run them in forever, but the original Wild Wild West show (with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin) was one of my favorites so I had a train to duplicate theirs using the Inyo, a horse car (I think that one was Tyco, a baggage car, and a coach. The only one of the bunch that didn’t run as smooth was the Bowker. The Reno was the best runner out of them. And the Hudson. Sure, the plastic steam locos made in the past 10 years have gotten MUCH better, the detailing is as good as older brass models, but all these Rivarossi locos date from the late 60’s. There was no BLI, Bachmann Spectrum, Proto 2000, etc. There wasn’t much better than Rivarossi, unless you went brass.
–Randy
I don’t know WHO made it, but a lot of the junky AHM stuff was made in Yugoslavia, as I recall. I’m thinking the GP18, SD40, SW1, C-424, RS-2 for example. What dogs, even then. I sold mine (yup, I bought some) a few years ago for maybe $3 each. And felt I made a great deal.
Ed
For that matter, did Santa Fe ever operate any loco with a livery anything like that? I sorta doubt it. Bogus liveries are pretty easy to find in this hobby, and a little research can be wothwhile (unless you don’t care, which is your right). At the hobby shop just the other day, I saw an MTH F3A in Bessemer & Lake Erie colors. Hohohohoho. I kept my wallet in my pocket.
Tom
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