Reflections on the assembly of a 50 year old Athearn blue box model

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

My HO scale layout yard needed 3 grain cars. I found reasonably priced ones on ebay, as I wasn’t too picky about the road name. All 3 came unassembled with their original boxes and all. Here are some thoughts that run thru one’s mind during the assembly process.

All 3 were '3-bay Covered Hopper’s, as stamped on the end of the box, but the instruction sheet indicated ‘54 ft Covered Hopper Car’. No big deal, close enough.

One was a red MKT hopper, the Athearn number on the box is 5305. According to my handy-dandy “Standard Guide to Athearn Model Trains” book (by Blaisdell and Urmston Sr), this model was manufactured by Athearn in 1971. It has existed unassembled in a box for 50 years. Brand new, someone paid a whopping $2.98 for it. I paid $10 for it on ebay, before shipping. Somebody’s return on investment wasn’t the best, but it’s better than nothing. (Around 2.44% annualized.)

The old blue box is in pristine condition. Translation - it has not been juggled around in a crate to hundreds of train shows trying to find a happy home. Upon opening the box, it reveals that it has spent most of its life in a basement. Just the right amount of musty smell - not too much and not too little. The box was stored unopen over the years - no dust whatsoever. The axles and screws have bit of rust on them. No big deal, the plastic wheelsets get replaced with IRC ones anyway.

The red body has a nice age to it. The MKT letters were probably white at the start, but now have a bit of a nice fade to them. The folded 1/2 page instruction sheet faded in a bizarre way. The side that faced down to the bottom of the box is noticeably more faded than the other side facing up. Mind you - if you needed to contact Athearn for a replacement body, it would have cost you $1.25 back then. I have assembled a number of these 54’

2

Glad to hear of your experience, although it is what I would have expected.

I have literally built hundreds of blue box kits, going back to the early 1960s. I currently own about 200, down from a peak of 350 - 400.

With some light weathering of the trucks (black/brown wash), KD couplers, and Intermountain wheelsets, they are extremely reliable runners. I also did a light spray of Dull-Cote, and they looked good as well.

The thing is, if you really want to run your trains and are prone to handling them and/or they derail (operator error of course), these Athearn cars are almost indestructable.

No, detail wise you can’t compare them with a Red Caboose or Intermountain or even a Walthers kit, but of course you get what you pay for and the effort you put into them.

I used to have consists of the streamline and the heavy weight passenger cars. Most were “shorties”, but they looked darned good to me, and you didn’t have to worry about tight curves, etc.

Finally, I will say that Irv Athearn is one of the handful of pioneers that made HO trains the popular hobby that it is today.

3

Interesting to think of the gems still waiting to be assembled sitting on a shelf. An even older Ambroid perhaps. interesting to think of it was held to fra standards, it wouldn’t be allowed to run since it is well past the 40 year operating limit.

I have a postwar Lionel car from late 50’s. Never run with original box never out. If it does come out it will sit on a shelf.

4

Around 10 to 15 years ago, there was an online website, no longer in exsitence, that was selling yellow-box-era Athearn HO kits that had never been built. I really wanted some of these, because these are the cars that I grew up with, and I really love the metal sprung trucks. They were around only 6 or 8 bucks a throw.

Over several months, I bought maybe 8 from this dealer, and they all looked untouched by time.

The website closed down a short time after I bought these, and had I known this, I would have bought many more of these cars.

It is truly incredible how many pristine HO kits are still in the boxes, waiting to be built.

5

Great! I assembled some too (my collection).

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It’s interesting to find out about older models and their prototypes. Also, it is very fun to devise the assembly of the kits.

6

Funny, I have never owned an Athearn anything for long (sure I must have gottsome in a bulk buy at one point), they were never up to my standard, not that my MDC was that much better but they could be improved easily (I started in HO when MDC had grab holes predrilled and wire grab irons to put in (they were not more than staples but you could get good ones from a half dozen companys) and as far as engines, I bought out a closing major hobby shop’s entire brass detail invintory.

7

Athearn Blue Box, cheapest price new in box $2.55, Train Minture Inc. plastic box, cheapest price new in box $3.55, Model Die Cast/Roundhouse, cheapest price new in box $2.00, all freight cars, a boy cutting grass and doing odd jobs could afford them and build them in five minutes without even looking at the instructions unlike those Craftsman kits that cost more money and took three days to build and another thing those Athearn, MDC and TMI, they were the bread and butter of my layouts and there was not a whole lot to chose from back then. How many are still New In the Box, I have no idea.

As of this date in freight cars I have accumulated Accurail, AHM, Atlas, Bachmann (silver series), Bev-Bel, Bluford Shops, Bowser, Branchline, Broadway Limited Imp., Con-Cor, Detail Associates/Detail West, Doghouse Hobbys, E&B Valley, E&C Shops, English’s, Exact Rail-Platinum & Express, I.H.C., Intermountain, Kadee, Keystone, Kato, K&D Hobby Dist., Lifelike-Proto 1K &2k, Mainline Hobby Supplys, Mantua, McKean, Mehano, Model Power, Northeastern, Railrunners, C&M Shops, Red Caboose, Roco, Spring Mills Depot, Stewart, Tichy Train Group, Third Rail Graphics, Tangent, Tyco, Varney, Walthers-Blue & white box & in the colorful box.

8

I had a similar bout of nostalgia a while back when, for some reason, I recalled a day when I was out with my dad and we were somewhere on the far side of town and my dad spotted a hobby shop that we had not ever been to.

He turned around and we stopped in. I really couldn’t say where this was in the Cleveland area. There were dozens of hobby shops around town but I distinctly remember spying this Baby Ruth box car and without too much fussing on my part, my dad kept it in his hands as he continued to browse.

It may have been the only thing he bought that day but I distinctly remember opening the box and checking out all the fine detail (maybe just a touch better than a Blue-Box?).

Well, I have no idea whatever happened to that particular Train Miniature kit but some fifty years later I came across one at a local train show and there it was!

Baby-Ruth2 by Edmund, on Flickr

It was worth every penny (ten bucks, maybe) for me to be able to relive that day. Even opening the box had the same smells I remember as a young boy!

Curtiss_Ice-Reefer by Edmund, on Flickr

I only keep a few treasures like this. Sort of like Owen’s coin collection from Throw Momma From the Train, each little “coin” has it’s own treasured memories.

Regards, Ed

9

Train Miniature rolling stock, especially the boxcars, are among my favourites, partly because they offered the first versions of affordable models representing the PRR’s X-29 boxcars and the NYC’s USRA steel boxcars, both prototypes somewhat related in their manner of construction.
While I had a couple of TM hoppers, the boxcars (and some reefers) were the big draw for me.
Boxcars came as both single- and double-sheathed wood cars and two varieties of steel cars, the main differences of the latter being the size of the side panels and the style of the doors.
Refrigerator cars came in both wood and steel versions, with detail variations of the wooden ones being mostly whether or not they had hatch platforms. There were also two versions of the steel reefers, one with traditional hinged doors, the other with a sliding plug doors.
Like pretty well all of the TM house cars, the stockcars had a low interior height which made them an interesting variation in a train otherwise made up of Athearn and MDC boxcars.
I still have quite a few TM cars on my layout, all of them with added details and custom paint and lettering, and many with major modifications to represent prototype cars which differ greatly from their original TM appearance. I also have a few awaiting modification, again to represent models quite unlike their as-built appearance.

Some Train Miniature cars…

(Click on photos for an enlarged version)

USRA steel boxcar, modified as a door-and-a-half car…

…a similar car, with no major modifications other than new paint and lettering…

This one was modified with double doors…

10

The switch to HO scale from N scale for the STRATTON AND GILLETTE was made possible by Athearn blue box freight cars.

I went into HO scale with the intent to build a switching layout in the master bedroom above the dresser. That plan would materialize as SGRR #4. I figured I needed a dozen freight cars.

At this time in my life, money was tight. We were on vacation in Indiana and I went into Hawkins Rail Service in their old location downtown in Lafayette.

They had a massive selection of Athearn undecorated blue box models. All were about $4.00 each, and I bought 15 of them that day. That purchase cemented the switch to HO scale.

The switching layout took a while to build, and soon Intermountain, Red Caboose, and Proto-2000 freight cars became the actual fleet. However, all those blue box kits were painted and decorated, then ended up on the HO scale layout of Scale Rails of Southwest Florida.

Ah… memories.

I still build Athearn blue box freight cars for the STRATTON AND GILLETTE and give them away.

-Kevin

11

Gidday Mark VW, thoroughly enjoyed your reflection, thank you.

Too right mobillman 44, for transporting and running on an exhibition layout, they’re the bee’s knees.
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]

12

Ah but some of us remember when the Yellow Box kits came with metal trucks BUT instead of springs, there were little pieces of hard rubber that were molded to look a little bit like two springs. You’d pop one into place in the truck. Actual metal springs were an “after market” extra. I think Athearn moved from from the hard rubber fake springs pretty early on.

Irv Athearn can be accused of many things - mixing up features from different prototypes on one car; applying paint schemes from one era to cars from another; getting the underframe airbrake system detail exactly wrong; those “claws” that held the boxcar doors in place; car numbers that were from entirely different cars, or just plain made up; strange choices of prototype such as the “old fasioned” double sheathed wood boxcar that was actually a Great Northern “war emergency” prototype and not old fashioned at all. And the list goes on. But he NEVER gouged his customers and even though it is of course always possible to get misty-eyed when seeing prices of the past without taking into account what a new car or new house cost at the same time, or what average yearly income was at the time – even then the Athearn prices were remarkable, and you got value for your money.

But the real interesting achievement of Athearn, and one that no manufacturer of today really seems to be attempting (Kadee comes closest with some boxcar details), is that all the parts of every kit were available separately for sale AND many hobby shops actually tried to carry a fairly good selection of those parts.

13

Thanks. None of the yellow-box kits that I’ve had included rubber springs. They were always the real deal. Not that I’m doubting you, I just never encountered one.

14

That’s about the time that I switched from my old Lionels and started building an HO layout. I still have the HO rolling stock I bought on Day One. A few missing stirrups, to be sure, but when I took everything out of the boxes I’d stored them in for 40 years, I had that same thrill of rediscovery.

Kadees first, of course, and then Intermountain replacements for those plastic wheelsets. Most of the actually sprung trucks had deteriorated and we’re no longer able to hold wheelsets in place, so new trucks were needed, too.

15

I love those Athearn 54’ covered hoppers. I have built dozens, and have scores more to build. I think I got my first for $3.00 each. Fun to build, update, upgrade, whatever you want to call it. Best part is they are great runners and very easy to transport to the club or to a modular set up.

16

I have a few, in the box, bought in the late 70’s, untouched. I couldn’t help myself…[:|]

It was so easy, I could use change from a can I kept in my work truck.

What was I to do? [:^)]

At the time, that’s all you seen on grain trains, & potash trains. Then…I spotted my first cylindrical hopper! [:P]

Mike.

17

One of these was the first HO American model I ever purchased at a Model Railway Exhibition for £2.50 (2016) It was battered and grimy, no box. When I had pulled it all to pieces, I thought how good it seemed when I had cleaned and re-assembled it.

Next I got hold of an un-opened box version for £10.00 and realized that for the equivalent era of manufacture - it was far superior to any OO scale British model I had ever run on my Model Railway. The whole design concept of the unassembled model, I thought was spot-on.

They are very common in the UK and I obtained a good No. at good prices. I plan upgrade them. I guessed that the 3/4 high Stiffeners date them and I plan to carve these off, replacing with single Eves Stiffeners made from Styrene-strip. I have a later Atlas version to assist with any extra detailing required, but I think I will leave the Walkways as is. There is an article about upgrading these cars, somewhere in the Digi-Archives.

I know that these will be fictitious Cars, but I’m not too bothered about that. Paul

18

What a great set of stories here. I’m enjoying them. As a kid I loved saving up some money and picking out an Athearn kit at a hobby shop. One of those kits was a red MKT covered hopper, just like the OP’s, which was clicking off scale miles on the layout just a couple of hours ago.

19

I eventually narrowed my fleet down to what I was used to seeing, the SOO Color mark cars.

I still have many in service, so does the CP.

Mike.