To All of the Know it All Guru’s (Minority), does anyone know for certain whom purchased the follwing plastic injection molding tool:
(1) Front Range Locomotives and Freight Cars. Remember the EMD GP-7/9’s, GP-30’s, GP-38-2’s, etc? Front Range had delveloped their own respective drive mechanism for powered units.
(2) GSB EMD SD40-2 Tooling.
(3) McKean Freight Cars (Accurail did indeed purchased the PS-1 Tooling 6’ & 8 doors and Double door 40’ XM.
(4) Ramax 35’ LO Tooling.
ALL of these Products were Made in the United States of America.
Do you realize, that to the best of my knowledge not one firm presently offers ANY HO Scale plastic diesel locomotive kits, Made in the United States of America???
IIRC, the Ramax ACF 2970CF tooling was picked up by Detail Associates, and extensive re-tooling was done - The result is their ‘kit’. I have not seen the kit offered for quite a while.
Why Not??? Manufacturing cost is still too high at this time to bring a lot of this stuff back to the US. Accurail , Kadee and Bowser make their cars in the US. ExactRail and Intermountain do the tooling and plastic injection molding in the US, but the painting/assembly is done in the Pacific Rim. I suspect you are hinting that Bowser also makes their diesel locomotives in the US as well. I remember seeing that Bowser had pictures of their new injection molding production area on their web site a while ago. I think their US injection molding vendor sold them the equipment.
The Front Range GP9 tooling is the basis for the current Athearn Genesis units. Some of the inaccuracies in the original tooling remain, but others were corrected and better detail added. The FR GP30 used the same shell as the 1970s Lionel model, and is now the Bachmann unit, again with a few changes but not so many as with Athearn. In neither case was anything of the FR mechanism re-used.
I have a couple locos based on FR shells, and have used their frames beneath others. FR’s trucks were among the worst ever made (they had at least two designs, one with floating journals used under the GP30, and another for the GP7/9), but fortunately it’s quite easy to substitute Athearn or Kato parts to create a mechanism that will run well.
I used a Front Range GP7 frame for one of my Frankenstein GP9’s. I had to file a part off the edges of the openings for the trucks to fit Athearn F7 trucks to it. Other than that it was easy.
Before anybody made a high nose GP20 in plastic, I kitbashed this one using a Proto 2000 GP18 with a Tyco long hood (except for the end which is P2K, P2K grilles, Athearn dynamic brake blisters, new fans and other details), sitting on a Front Range frame powered by a Kato/Stewart F9 (the motor mounts screw into place in the frame with no modification, and the trucks fit as-is too). It still needs weathering in this photo, but finally got decals after sitting around unfinished for over 15 years.
Another of my Frankenstein Front Range units was a GP9 that appeared on the cover of the June, 1997 issue of MR. That one uses the FR shell and frame with Kato F unit guts. It’s still in regular service.
Front Range used a variety of motors. I had a GP30 with some kind of unmarked can-type motor in an unpainted silver case. One of the GP7/9 mechanisms I bought had a nice Cannon can motor. Thanks to the terrible universals/trucks/gears, performance was completely unacceptable out of the box regardless of the motor used. Sometimes old Front Range mechanisms are worth picking up for cheap at the train show just to salvage the motors.
Yes, that was the best part of the GSB loco. I believe it was an unlabeled Mashima. The frame was plastic and warped. NO flywheels and the trucks also had issues. Body was not too bad for the time.Nice bag of detail parts were included.
I remember seeing them languish in the LHS display for many years. To their credit, the guys would always warn potential buyers. Athearn had their SD 40-2 out just before GSB.
The Front Range locos I’ve gotten hold of had Mashima motors that I put to good use in a GP9 and a couple of F units I built from bits and pieces. If their locos had been as good as the motors they would’ve had something good.
Yeah, the GP7/9 with the Tapp trucks were pretty horrible.[+o(]
After Front Range failed, the GP7/9 were picked up by Trains Unlimited. The same body, slightly different frame with Athearn trucks and driveline. I’ve still got 2, and they run,well, just as nice as a BB Athearn.[:-,] Handrails sucked, so I swapped them out with Atlas railings. All in all, not hateful!
The Front Range Freight Cars were split with some going to Accurail and the other’s to Red Caboose, in Accurail’s case the grabs and ladders were now cast on the model after cutting new dies as the aluminum dies used by Front Range were pretty well shot by then. Red Caboose kept the grabs and on the detail as to be attached by the modeler and again cleaned up the dies. The Covered Hopper kits went to nobody as they were pretty bad.
McKeen kits were split between Accurail and Con-Cor with Accurail getting the boxcars and Con-Cor getting the 12 and 15 panel hopper cars. Of course McKeen got the Front Range dies and made some kits before they went to Accurail and Red Caboose.
Sky-Lim also got in the picture and produced some of these kits also.
Front Range wwas not the end of the Fred Becker saga. The next venture was LBF out of Oregon. I think there were some health issues (vision) involved which is why the LBF tooling is close but doesn’t quite look right. After LBF went to the bottom of the ocean I don’t know the next chapter of Fred Becker. He is seen at some of the shows/swap meets in the Northwest from time to time.
After Front Range, he started E&C Shops, Then LBF. LBF started out as freight car loads(Loads By Fred). Eventually LBF started producing freight cars. After LBF, Huberts took over the line. I have heard several stories about the Huberts involvement with LBF, but it appears that the remaining inventory was re-packaged in Huberts boxes and sold. There does appear to be at least one gondola project that saw the light of day, and there are rumors that there were Trinity 6151 covered hoppers sitting in China awaiting payment. The Trinity 5161 was not bad, and there are folks who still argue whether the LBF/Huberts car was better than the Athearn Genesis model. One thing I have noticed is that the Front Range/McKean cars seem to have rather shallow ‘relief’ - I suspect this is due to the die cutting of the tooling. I have lots of ‘upgraded’ Front Range/McKean ACF covered hoppers They produced an ACF 4650 grain hopper and an ACF 5701 plastic pellets hopper. Atlas & Intermountain now produce very nice 4650’s and Atlas has a 5701 - None of the old Front Range/McKean tooling are involved in these models. Accurail has an ACF 4600CF - Again, there is nothing of the old Front Range/McKean tooling in this model.
