Came upon an old UP stock car kit by Globe Models (HO). Can anyone give me some info on them? I believe Athern bought them in 1951, but that’s all I know. Curious??
Globe Models was started in Milwaukee. I believe the late Carl Traub was involved with some of the early tool and die work (Traub was a superb scratchbuilder who late in life turned to live steam). I think Globe moved from Milwaukee and was eventually bought by Athearn. The most famous Globe product was their F7 – still the tooling Athearn uses for their “cheap” F7 – which in its day was a marvel of fine detail, given the standards of the time, and was the first salvo in the plastics versus metal wars that consumed the pages of MR for much of the 1950s. Compare a Globe F7 (which originally was available only as a dummy, for I think 98 cents) to the metal Varney F3 of the same era and you will see a great difference.
As you point out Globe eventually made freight cars but I do not think Globe lasted into the mid 1950s.
Dave Nelson
If I remember correctly the old Athearn rubber band drive was the carry over from Globe. Athearn eventually upgraded the drive but as stated above, the shell is the same. And while not as detailed as the new shells or Genesis, with a little work those old shells can be made to look alright.
Thanks guys. I figured they were probably as old as me, but I wasn’t modeling back then so the name was new to me.
Globe Models included 40-ft. boxcars, tank cars ((two sizes) and cattle cars. The boxcar and cattle car were build over a wood subframe, with stamped steel sides, and brass or steel ends, doors, and roof , and a stamped steel underframe. Detail parts were diecast. The cattle car had plastic sides, as I recall. The earlier boxcar kits had brass ends, boxcar doors and roofs, with only the sides being prepainted steel. Later boxcars had steel ends, doors and roofs, and all these parts, in addition to the sides, were prepainted (on both sides!) with a nice semi-gloss finish. I remember being impressed with this finish as opposed to the dead flat Athearn finish- and the Athearn cars were never painted except on one side- encouraging later rusting unless you went to the trouble to paint those sides (no one ever did!). The tank car kits featured prepainted upper and lower tank segments, while the tank ends, dome, underframe and detail parts were diecast (or in the case of the centersill and cross members, stamped steel) and were unpainted. In the 50’s I built a NYC boxcar and a Texaco tank car and thought these were pretty spiffy! Globe freightcar kits are currently bringing pretty decent prices on EBay.
-Richard W.