Has anyone ever heard of Lindberg Lines? I found 4 of these models with boxes at an auction, but haven’t been able to dig up a whole lot on when these models were made or if I got a good buy or not. There’s also doesn’t seem to be much information on their HO offerings. Has anyone seen this brand before?
I’ve seen the brand before and have owned a couple of their HO freight cars. They looked fairly descent but weren’t great on the rails.Lindberg Line went out of the HO train business in the early 70’s. Mantua obtained the tooling for the Lindberg freight cars in the 80’s. As far as I know the only loco Lindberg put out was an SW600. There was talk of a U25B expected for January 1968 but it never appeared.
This was also true with the regular “plastic” models. They were quite poor castings and part fit/ gates were quite bad. Nothing like Monogram or Revell. I douby that the RR offerings would have been much better, especially running up against other brands of the times.
In a word RUN!
The cars was barely passable back in the 60s and their so called SW1 had a spring drive and would jerk going down the track-until the spring broke which was about every 4- 5 feet.
On the other hand their trucks was top of the line and and would roll smoother and farther then the beloved Central Valley Trucks or Athearn trucks-however,Athearn improved their trucks (63/64?) and their trucks was just as smooth as Lindberg’s trucks.
The SW1.
Lindberg produced plastic (I think Delrin) sprung freight trucks that were excellent. I still have a box of them in the original retail display. Occasionally they show up on eBay.
The Lindberg sprung trucks have been recently on the market by a company called EB Products. Greenway Products use to have them listed on their web site, and always had them at the train shows over the last few years, but I do not see them listed on the newly redone Grenway site.
EB Products has never had a web site and only occasionally runs a small ad in MR or RMC, so I don’t know the current statis of the company/product. They are very nice and they are one of very few to ever make a model of an enclosed Timken Roller Bearing freight truck that was common on the earliest freight cars equiped with roller bearings.
Back in the Lindberg day, those trucks were very popular, the only really good thing they offered.
Sheldon
I built many Lindgerg plastic models and don’t feel their quality was all that bad or much different than other manufacturers.
Amusingly, these Lindberg HO trucks (yes, I know, miserable “pun”) were the only kind I have been familiar with - scale tractor trailer trucks, I have one Ford and one GMC - I guess that the only models they made- and they were molded pretty well - look to be the correct size, but I have never measured them. And back in the 1980s when you had a rather limited US manufacturer selection (Jordan, Alloy Forms, Tyco, maybe the old Revell Ford C-cab, whatever you could scavange from Matchbox), they certainly helped.
Now that you post that, I had one of the pickup campers, I remember putting it together.
–Randy
Never heard of them till now, but apparently that was part of a whole mid-70s line called “Hi Rollers” which also included a Van, Mail Truck, Tow Truck, Cement Mixer and so on.
Aha, found the 87th Vehicle Lindberg page OK, I have the “Truckin’ Big / Over the Road” Ford CL-900 and the GMC Astro (upon reinspecting them, they need a new paint job (I did lousy work 30 years ago), and a bit of detailing and weathering, but look fairly good otherwise.
Great line from the “Hi-Rollers” box - "“Although not in exact H.O. scale, this kit may be compatible with H.O. gauge layouts”. Oh well, you use what you gotta use…
Man, there was several different series of rather useful vehicles. I wonder how “compatible with H.O.” the Mini-Series and Super Sport vehicles were - whole bunch of useful vehicles (Vega! Gremlins! Mavericks!) decades before Ricko, Fresh Cherries, Model Power et. al. Also note some duplicates of the Tyco Chevy Camaro and AMX Javelins (which have very good bodies, but no interior or undercarriage or usable windshields). And wasn’t there someone on this forum asking about 1960s/1970s School buses, perhaps a Ford B-series one? (The 87th site does warn the cars were a bit bigger than HO, and the trucks a bit small).
I have a Lindberg HO scale Santa Fe reefer (steel side, ice bunker) and while it is somewhat generic in detail it is a nice looking car. It went together OK, not really much different from any other “shake the box” (as they were called back then) kits. And with the Lindberg trucks, it rolls very well. It has a slightly lower profile than some other steel reefer models. I doubt if it is anything close to a ATSF accurate model but it not bad looking.
What I do recall was that as it came one of the hornhook couplers (which I used back then) was badly deformed, so it seems they had some quality control issues.
The box the reefer came in had a magnificent painting of the SW switcher in full Chicago & North Western paint. In fact I am pretty sure I bought that reefer just to have the picture on the box!
Dave Nelson.
I have a couple of their HO scale ship models and they are not up to the quality of Revell or even Monogram. The fit is OK but many details are too big and out of scale. I am trying to locate some ship model detail parts to replace the ones in the kit. Just my observation.
-Bob