Greetings,
Just curious. Did IHC when they first introduced there smoothside passenger cars copy Rivarossi’s mold?
I just received an older BN smoothside vista dome car that matches the form of the Rivarossi car, paint too.
I looked in the Walthers catalog and on the IHC-Hobby.Com website and the car form is different than Rivarossis now. It seems its changed now?
Did IHC have to change theres not to have it look exactly like Rivarossi’s cars?
Thanks,
Mark in Texas
I believe that some of the IHC passenger cars were made under contract by Rivarossi in the past. I haven’t seen a new IHC passenger car for a couple of years now, so I don’t know if they are still made by Rivarossi for someone else.
Mark;
The first couple years of IHC, they marketed Rivarossi cars under the IHC brand. They still had Rivarossi on the bottom. Later they had a falling out, and IHC contracted with another company. The first ones of these were very poor, I have not seen the more recent one.
I’ve recently purchased IHC passenger cars.
I’m not impressed with the wheel sets, but they do seem a bit better than the Rivarossi cars I have.
Gordon
Before there was IHC there was AHM. It is my recollection that AHM fell on hard times quite a few years ago and went belly-up. Furthermore, I think they were reorganized as IHC and even kept the same address in Phila. AHM packaging should be familiar to anyone who attends swap meets or is old as dirt. It was blue & white, extremely flimsy and made even more so by a really thin sheet of clear plastic on the front of the box that seldom stayed in place very long. On,or about 1966-1968, I purchased a number of HO " AHM" heavyweight passenger cars and several engines, such as the Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0 (before they added the booster truck), Pere Marquette and Nickle Plate 2-8-4, a N&W 2-8-8-2 Y6b.and several very forgettable diesels ( EMD BL2 and FM units). If memory serves me right , some, if not all of the hw passenger cars and steamers were marked ‘made in Italy’ and branded "Rivarossi’, while the diesels, and at least some of the truly awful freight equipment, was marked ‘made in Austria’ and some ‘made in Yugoslavia’ I do not recall the branding, but it may have been “Mehano”-same brandname as today for some of IHC’s products. The diesels were pure junk, w/ heavy, but limited detailing and awful paintwork; they ran even worse! On the other hand, the heavyweight passenger cars and steam engines were considered ‘state of the art’ in plastic HO at the time; yes the flanges were so deep that they hung up on some brands of code 100 or on ballast if too liberaly applied. On the passenger equipment the couplers were talgo- type and contributed to even more derailments, and they lacked any heft-they were way too light for any operation. The paint work was excellent (although only basic paint schemes like PRR tuscan were offered), the details, including the trucks were quite good and not too heavy handed. The engines had crisp detailing with some separately applied parts, separate handrails, decent pilots, side rods (but shiny metal), very good paint/markings, super -deep European flanges,