How can you tell the age of your rolling stock? Athearn.
I have happened abound a small horde of older Athearn blue box rolling stock. I know some of them are old. They are New In Box, weights are rusted and boxes discolored.
One of the boxcar’s frames was so brittle, when I installed the coupler box the plastic turned into dust.
Is there a simple way to tell by the part number, picture on the box or the instructions? Not worried about what they might be worth. What they are worth in how they track. So far they are working great.
I think I once had one so old that it had steel construction and 4 screws on the underside corners.
I have a horde of Bluebox athearn that is running today. These are the same kits that I used to build as a child 20+ years ago. Some of these kits were new run from China within the last 2 years. However the basic design I guess is at least 25 years old.
There were several that had to be scrapped or rebuilt with fresh underframes, weights, doors, trucks, wheels etc.
I have no idea how to tell the age of these things. I ESTIMATE them to be within 1 to 10 years old.
Some of the Blueboxes I built as a kid still survive in varying states of decay and those are approaching 30 years if not more in age. It will take subsantial upgrading, rebuilding to return them into service. Some are limited run of the day and probably will never be re-issued and therefore will be a total loss.
They can be made to operate properly with the correct three point suspension on the trucks, proper gauged wheels, straight frame weights etc.
I recently ran a set of 20 forwards and backwards at top speed on a test loop without issues.
The oldest item on the railroad I believe is a Revell Engine Fuel/Sand Facility that is marked “Revell 1960” by the factory when they molded the kit. I rebuilt it and updated the paint after I won it on ebay.
I paint my weights when I recieve them from Athearn as special orders in piles. That way they are ready to go when the old blue box shows up with a severely rusted or worn/bent weight. That weight is the key to the underframe and floor. It needs to be in good condition and straight.
Maintaining weights by painting stops the oxidation or slows it down greatly.
For what it’s worth, here’s my 2 cents. There are several ways to tell the age of rolling stock. All of which won’t really give a true age though. If the car has Mantua hoop-hook couplers (40-50’s), the car is made of wood with cardboeard or paper sides (30-40’s), the car has metal dummy couplers (40’s), the car has plastic dummy couplers (50’s), the car’s trucks have deep wheel flanges (70’s or earlier). It’s easier to tell how old a car ain’t though. Look on the sides for a built date- usually looks like this ( BLT 4-76 ). We pretty much know the model wasn’t produced before that date. If we know when the prototype of the car was built, say like an auto rack, we know the car wasn’t made before the full sized one was. I have an old Mantua flat car I purchased back in the middle 50’s. It was all metal and had hoop-hook couplers. Over the years, it was up graded to RP-25 trucks and Kadee couplers. Ken
I have a couple of gons from the late 50’s. I remember they came in a yellow box with clear plastic window (long gone). The trucks are sprung, but the couplers have been replaced and both a still in service after these many years. Weathering has been done all naturally by time. [C):-)]
There was a book that was printed on Athearn by Tim Blaisdelll & Ed Urmston Sr. in 1998, Its soft back book and has a complete list of everything they made, how to figure out age,different run, years produced, maykings box types, everything you can think of. I see this book on ebay and at train show quite often, it sells for abot $10 to $20.
I have used this book for years to find out info on different items Athearn did produce.
First a lot of the earily Athearn yellow box road names are still with us and these cars remained the same over the years expect for the RP25 wheels that replaced the old “pizza cutter” wheels back in the early 60s and the McHenry coupler replacing the X2F in the late 90s.
Its really hard to tell the age of a Athearn car…I have seen rusty weights in new BB kits.
I have some early Athearn metal cars with sprung trucks, also some early plastic had sprung trucks. Freight cars produced during the 70s and 80s seemed to have washed out lettering (not printed very good), however they did weather up nicely. But I really like the cars produced nowadays, clean details with sharp lettering.
I still run lots of Athearn cars from the '60s and '70s, many with the original trucks and wheels, too. With a little upgrading, these are perfectly useable cars and can be made to look decent. On boxcars, the most noticeable change is to alter the doors and doortracks, and I also like to add wire grabirons and metal sill steps. I also use an autobody file to thin the roofwalks. The boxcar below had the roof cut off, then 6" was removed from the height of the sides, and the roof replaced. I added dreadnaught ends from Tichy, reworked the doors and underframe, and added lettering from C-D-S.
This reefer was picked up from the “used” table at the LHS for about $2.00, so I’m not sure how old it is. I rebuilt the doors, sidesills, and underframe, and scratchbuilt a new roof, following plans in RMC.
Of course, you don’t have to go to these extremes to be able to enjoy these old favourites. [swg]
Older blue box stuff is easily recognizable. The quality of the print on the reporting marks looks faded and blurry compared to the newer stuff. The lettering is much better on the newer cars.
I’ve been following this subject for a few days now.
I have two 200 ton cranes, one was my Dad’s (40+ yrs old), the other was given to me by my father-in-law for Christmas a few years ago (RTR).
My Dad’s old one has Solid metal trucks with surprisingly enough, shallow flanges. The printing is ledgible but not as clear as the RTR.
Another thing I just realized, I have a caboose of my Dad’s, a model from Crown holding it up to a undec BB caboose, it’s the same shell yet the Crown model is from the 50’s or sixties.
My first HO was some Athearn equipment. If the original trucks have rubber inserts instead of springs in the trucks then it is 1957 vintage. A year or 2 later they went to sprung trucks.
I’ve got two “guides to Athearn” books (Greenbergs & Standard Guide) and together they can nail the build date of anything I have looked up.
The old stuff comes in the blue box with the steam loco picture, and some of these are pretty desireable to collectors. I have picked up several metal kits (Athearn, and Athearn made/sold under other names - i.e. Menzies) and they are typically early '60s.
I suspect most of us “old timers” cut our HO teeth on Athearn, and frankly if it wasn’t for them and a few other companies (i.e. MRC, Atlas, KD, MDC, etc.) our numbers would be a lot smaller.
I still have a lot of kit built Athearn cars, all with metal wheelsets, KDs, light weathering and Dull Cote, and they still look real good to me!