Are they still in business? I purchased a couple of covered hopper kits but can’t seem to find the company on the internet.
Tom
They’re long gone, closed up around the early 1990’s. I bought several of their Geeps; very pretty to look at, but they never ran worth a d***…
OK. Thanks for the quick reply.
Tom
YOu can still find some of their kits from time to time. A hobby shop I go to here in Omaha still has some kits sitting on the shelf (at elast as of last Thursday!).
Rick
Front Range, E&C shops and LBF are all the same guy - Mr Fred Becker
Everything they made is now made new and better by someone else
Please excuse the prior poster (the one imitating my user name from the Atlas forum but forgot to put the space in it when registering here) but his spiteful comment about the past company is not correct…
Nobody has done a version of the NS 50’ converted TOFC flat cars since Front Range did them (McKean tried but in the process to improve the car simplified the molding, by removing the cut out sections, resulting in a car much closer to the CNW prototypes and far away from the SRR/NS ones). Also nobody has done a 63’ centerbeam flat car since (at all, in any form) - which is a shame because it is/was actually a very common car… And third, the ACF 62’ 4-bay plastic pellet covered hopper (also a common car) which was developed by Front Range and later relesed by McKean hasn’t been done since either…
jsoderg… That’s not quite right… Fred was involved with all three but they were not all his businesses… Fred did run Front Range and several years later LBF, but he was not an owner (or the person in charge) at E&C… He was employed by E&C at one point but left E&C to create LBF (Loads By Fred) several months (I think closer to two years) before the demise of E&C… Then LBF, which had originally been set up to create loads for the bethgons, gondolas, and hoppers of E&C, Walthers, MDC, Athearn, Con-Cor and others, acquired the ex-E&C tooling at auction and continued the production of many of the cars previously produced by E&C… Looking back now I find it interesting that if Athearn/Horizon had just been in a buying mood a few years earlier, and had bid higher on the ex-E&C tooling, then many of the current LBF cars would be in the Athearn line instead…
Thanks to all for your information. Redgray62, Used to live in Omaha. I really liked the place.
To all - I purchased a couple of the ACF two bay grain hoppers. Nice kit with decent details but I do have a question -
On each of the car bodies, there is a hole in each end but no apparent part to plug them. I tried finding pictures on the rail images and fallen flags but none cover the end of the car body to see what might be there. There asre a couple of extra hatches that I could modify to fit the are but am curious as to what should be there. Anyone have any ideas?
Any and all information greatly appreciated.
Tom
Who are you? I am not immitating anybody. My name is Curtis. Do you think you are the only Curtis in the world. There are lots of us. Do you go by Curt or Curtis? You are immitating me here if anything!
Walthers has done the Centerbeam and the plastic pellet car so I am correct.
The holes in the ends of covered grain hoppers are on the prototypes, too. I’m not really sure about their purpose other than possibly for access to something mechanical such as brake cylinders or air tanks.
The Walther’s centerbeam is a much longer (73’) model. I suspect the plastic pellet car is also based on a different prototype.
I’d like to see someone do a 63’ centerbeam, simply because it would fit better on smaller, tighter layouts.
As for the nickname thing, Curt Mc (with the space) was on several forums prior to your showing up as CurtMc. Understandably, I hope, this is kind of confusing.
And since you seem to like to troll/get confrontational, Curt Mc (with the space) felt he had a reputation to protect.
Thank you, cacole. I really appreciate the info.
Tom
Jeff, the plastic pellet car is different as far as I know.
Curt Mc (With a space), glad to have you aboard.
Matt
Only point I was making was that Fred was the driving force behind all 3. CadCam aluminum tooling, not very durable but easily replaced. I was at the FR auction to buy the GP but some of the molds were lost/missing so we didn’t buy. Maybe why they never showed up elsewhaere. As far as Athearn, they were all steel tooling and doubt they were interested. I molded for ConCor and MDC for years and don’t like aluminum tooling.
Was that the auction in Denver that ended up being an auction of exactly one lot of “the whole thing”?
CurtMc (without a space), I’ll explain how you are incorrect (again)…
The Walthers centerbeam is the much longer (and later) 72’ prototype, not the shorter 63’ one like Front Range made… And the Walthers pellet car is a model of a National Steel Car 6200cf prototype… nowhere close to the ACF 6700cf car that Front Range and McKean did… I notice that you didn’t mention the NS flat that I spoke of (nobody has come close to that one either).
The bottom line is that your trollish spiteful comment toward Front Range - trying to degrade the products they produced - wasn’t correct…
Front Range was a very inventive corporation and pushed the limits in a time when MDC was about the only HO model producers of contemporary cars, and even Athearn had no interest in doing modern stuff (BTW Atlas, Accurail, Intermountain, and Walthers hadn’t even started their modern HO freight car lines at the time). It’s too bad that their manufacturing execution wasn’t as advanced as their ideas…
- Curt Mc
PS. CurtMc, you mentioned yesterday that you post on the Atlas forum… What name do you use on the Atlas forum? You obviously don’t use “Curt Mc” there…
Are you refering to the 37’ Center-flow? Those carry denser materials such as portland cement and sand. I suppose they may have carried grain a few time if there was a large grain crop, not enough larger hoppers, and excess 37’ hoppers, otherwise they don’t haul grain.
As someone already wrote, the holes are prototypical. However, you may want to put a styrene sheet further back (at about where the diagonal end sheet is at on the prototypes) so that you cannot see through the hopper, at is not prototypical.
Gotta admit that I miss the Front Range 40’ boxcars they produced. They had all sorts of varieties of those puppies, and with a bit of modelin’ work, could be worked into a nice performing model.[C):-)]
That is my exact thoughts on Front Range. I was very excited to get my first Front Range kits and have some more modern cars (at the time). I loved the Front Runner/Four Runner they made. That had to be my favorite of them all.