Well, today was a rite of passage of sorts: I got my very first auto loader. It appears to be by Athearn, from the yellow-box era, with sprung trucks, which are my favorites.
Most of my 1950s autos go someplace on my winter layout, so I guess I will have to buy some more to put on the auto loader.
Now I just need the helicopter car, satellite car, and rocket launcher. I don’t think I need the exploading boxcar, though, because that is kitsch.
I thank you in advance for your warm expressions of congratulations.
I thought the giraffe car was Lionel. They make an HO giraffe car?
If it’s any consolation, I do have the Lifelike NYC circus wagon car. I don’t run it, but I have it for sentimental value. I found one new in the box, with the Two Guys price sticker still afixed on the outside. That is probably where my Dad bought me the one I received as a gift when I was little. I would have been on the fence, but the Two Guys sticker sealed the deal. It had to be mine.
Some years ago, a friend found a boxed set of Lionel HO trains in a relative’s attic he was cleaning out. He thought he had found a fortune. I had to break the news to him. He actually had a giraffe car and a helicopter car, plus a nuclear waste car.
He got $20 for the set from a dealer at a show.
I still have one of those Athearn auto-loader cars, two decks, open frame. I’ve got all the original autos, too. I remember going to a show where a modeler had like 20 of those cars, which he had filled with die-cast metal cars. He was having very little luck pulling the train around. With metal autos, the auto-loaders not only weighed too much, but the sprung trucks bottomed out.
Yeah, I thought about this. There are some nice plastic 1950s cars and pickup trucks available. I am generally watching the trains at a distance, so I won’t know whether the cars are metal or not, especially after an Old Fashioned or three.
The 50’ Athearn auto loader is prototypical - sort of…
The Evans Company, who made the auto racks for the inside of box cars developed an open 54’ rack that held 6 autos and used the same basic loading system they used to put 6 autos in a 50’ box car.
Only a handfull of test cars were built, the railroads and the auto industry were still a decade away from imbracing the “auto rack”.
The wide brace holding the uppe deck in the middle was for the lift ramp mechanism that allowed the autos to reach the upper deck. These cars could be loaded or unloaded at standard deck height platforms just like piggyback flats.
Being a freelance modeler, I sometimes “rewrite” history a little, so I have a small fleet of them loaded with generic 50’s sedans sold by LifeLike years ago.
I will try to add a picrture later.
Athearn put 4 somewhat over sized cars in the kit orginally, and sold the cars separately, but later they just left it up to the modeler to buy their autos or others.
Think about how to keep the autos from rolling or sliding around on the racks. I think mine were pretty stationary, so they probably had fitted grooves for two autos at each level.
I have a bunch of 1920s era auto cars. Box cars with double doors for loading tin lizzys.
I loved watching the shiny new cars go by in the open auto racks. Then they started to enclose them. The last memory I have of the open racks was a load of VW bugs following two cars of Corvettes, followed by a bunch of station wagons and Chevy and Pontiac sedans.
Actually I model the 50’s and have lots of double door 50’ automobile box cars, and my new layout will feature an assembly plant. Autos were moved mostly in boxcars until the 60’s.
Auto Loader… First thing I ghought of was weapons thaat we my not talk about on this web site.
Next I thought about a diesel engine: how engines load power.
Never occured to me about a freight car.
I only think in terms of passenger cars and if any passengers are loaded they are removed from the train at Jamaica.
(what dorks are at google… They think that Jamaica is an island country somewhere… Everybody knows that is a place in New York City!!! And a big passenger station.
.jpg)
.jpg)
