Rivarossi - I’ve heard the name, but don’t have any experience with them. Most of my fleet is probably Athearn, a little IHC, and a little Bachman (I’m a Philly boy.)
I recently won a bid on Ebay ($26 + 8) for a Rivarossi 4-4-0. Unfortunately it got damaged in the USPS system, so it was a bit of a kit by the time I got it. Interesting loco. Very tiny! It has what looks like a “pancake” motor in the tender, then a driveshaft over to the loco to drive the wheels. When I went to clean the wheels, nothing was coming off. I have to wonder if this thing ever saw any runtime. Seams to run smooth. Here’s a short video…
When I was feeding my HO train habit with money earned from a newspaper route Rivarossi, imported to USA through AHM (American Hobby Manufacturers) was a welcome source for pretty reasonably priced locomotives and rolling stock. I could walk a mile in any direction from my house and find a dozen stores stocking AHM/Rivarossi trains.
Sometime in early 2000s they were bought by Hornby and they continue to use the Rivarossi name for certain products. I don’t believe Hornby is going to export any more Rivarossi models to North America.
Too bad because the last two models I bought from them, GE U-25-Cs are excellent models and great running engines.
When I was in N scale in the early 1980s, Con-Cor imported N scale steam locomotives made by Rivarossi. I had one, a Heavy Pacific, that ran great. I bouight it at A&J Models in Cape Coral, Florida for about eighty dollars. That was a whole weeks pay from Winn Dixie when I was 16.
I’m a heavy steam guy (Southern Pacific) and really like the Rivarossi Articulateds. I bought a new Cab Forward from AHM in 1990 before they went belly-up and it was and still is a very nice locomotive, many many hours of running time.
The Cab Forward has run so nicely that I have bought over a dozen used Rivarossi articulateds off eBay since then and overhauled them to be as good or better than new.
The older Rivarossi motors draw a lot of current so I replace them with can motors, many with dual motors.
Over the years Rivarossi has had connections with Lionel, Athearn and Walthers. The 60’ HO C&NW based RPO, Baggage, and Utility Combine and Utility Coach (like Cody Grivno used a while back in an MR article on making a commuter train) have been sold under both Rivarossi and Walthers names for example.
I really like the old AHM/Rivarossi HO passenger cars, it’s not unusual to find them online or at a railroad flea market for $10-15. They have molded on details, but otherwise look very good and generally run well. (They are a bit light, I usually stick a couple of the square ‘peel and stick’ weights in the vestibules.)
The AHM imports were in a blue and yellow box with clear glazing so you could see the car inside; later under the Rivarossi name they had a solid maroon box. The later Rivarossi cars came with a one-piece plastic interior.
I should have mentioned that I also have the identical Rivarossi 4-4-0. It is also a good runner but with one exception. It is too light and although it does OK with three cars on level track it can only pull one shorty coach up a 1.6% grade without wheel slip. New traction tire didn’t help, just too light.
I use it for my Golden Spike Central Pacific 60 run on level track with a like Rivarossi Union Pacific 119.
I bought both Rivarossi locomotives off eBay and restored them, both have the original motors.
In its heyday, Rivarossi was seen as a major player (vs. the toy manufacturers). The main problem with the 70’s engines was the poor power pickup on the steam engines. Adding extra wipers on the tenders is an easy fix to that. The can motors were excellent at the time. I have a few that still run. I especially like my Heislers, that remain unique in the non-brass category. The 1990’s engines are nice and affordable, if you don’t mind plastic. As mentioned above, Hornby acquired the company and still uses the name for some of its rolling stock. I appreciate the fact that they keep the legendary name alive.
Growing up in the '60s, Rivarossi was one of the fabled names in RTR, particularly the ‘holy grail’ cab-forward and Big Boy models. You had ‘arrived’ if you had one of those!
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is the crude ‘pizza cutter’ flanges (this, I always thought, is why the sobriquet about Italian food is used) that they used. It is possible to stone these down, even to approximate a NMRA tread profile on them… but the plastic wheel centers require very, very careful handling. (In fact, I did my high-school senior independent project on what were then called ‘metallic glasses’ and got some of the idea on how to spin and quench them from using refrigerant streaming on Rivarossi wheels spun on a Dremel to work down…)
I, too, am a big fan of the Rivarossi passenger cars, and have bought quite a few of them off the “used” table at a now-gone nearby hobbyshop - usually for considerably less than ten bucks apiece.
New England Rail Services offered a lot of useful parts for detailing the Rivarossi cars, along with conversion kits to change the Rivarossi 12-1 Pullman cars into most of the other prototypical Pullmans that had been in-service. They also offered lots of underbody details suitable for most makes of heavyweight cars, as did Precision Scale.
Here’s one of their Pullman cars, with not too much modification, changing it into a coach (my freelanced railroad isn’t long enough to need Pullman cars, although it does handle a few between connecting roads)…
Here’s a similar Pullman converted into a solarium tail-end car…
This combine was originally a Rivarossi diner, and has been shortened somewhat…
I’ve also altered some Pullmans and coaches into wooden bagagge cars, based on photos of real ones…
One of Rivarossi errors was the wheel sizes on their articulateds. I kicked around doing something with the Cab Forward deep flanges but after measuring them I decided not to. Rivarossi eroded with the wheel diameter, the 63.5” wheel diameter isn’t the wheel tire diameter, the Rivarossi 63.5” is the diameter to the outside edge of the deep flange. Reducing the flange will make the wheels look too small.
I discovered that accidently when drawing a Cab Forward (and AC-9) on my CAD. I found out when I was scaling and measuring the Rivarossi wheels for my drawings.
I chose to leave the deep flanges as is, the only problem I have had with the deep flanges on code 83 track is they don’t clear Shinohara or relabeled Shinohara code 83 turnouts. 30 years ago I tried every brand of double crossover and none would work with Rivarossi deep flanges, shorts from the oversized flanges.
I didn’t have any problems with the deep flanges on code 83 Atlas or Peco turnouts so I built my own double crossover using Atlas Custom Line Turnout
Mehano/IHC also built a bunch of pizza cutting locomotives. The one we have rumbles noticeably on the spike heads of both Atlas and Peco code 83.
One of the last, the Santa Fe, has proper RP25 flanges and I quite like it even though the CPR built their own Santa Fe’s.
At least Mehano equipped Santa Fe CPR #5812 with the correct six axle tender, although it’s coal and the prototype was oil, having been handed down tom5812 from the experimental Selkirk 8000.
I’m not sure I follow the point made about grinding the flanges down making the wheels look too small. The look of the wheel is surely of the wheel and not the steel tire. The oversize flange definitely makes the actual wheel look too small.
I also have an 8 car consist of Rivarossi heavies in CPR maroon. They are very nice and track well but being a CPR consist in Canada you cannot get them for US$10 each, more like CAD$23.00 each. The McHenry couplers are dismal, as always.
As Mel said, it’s not so much that the grinding makes them look small as that they ARE too small – at least, in many cases: the GG1 wheels, most of the heavyweights, and the cab-forward being particular examples I remember. I chemically blackened the whole tire to hide this a bit from the ‘outside’ of the sideframe where it is less not unless you really ‘know’ what the prototype is like… even so, a proper pair of Central Valley trucks is like a makeover for those cars. (And yes, the cab-forward drivers are visibly too small; I thought about machining “oversized” tires to put on and then truing the axle up to stone the tires concentric, but never did it.)
I bought a set of Poxbox 63” driver wheels from Greenway Products and they wouldn’t fit in the Rivarossi driver assemblies the wheel touched so as I said earlier I chose to leave the Rivarossi wrong size wheels on my Rivarossi articulateds. With the deep flanges they look OK to me, but then I’m not a rivet counter.
The Rivarossi Cab Forwards are very good runners and with new can motors I have added 10 ounces of weight to the boiler shell and they will pull the paint off the walls, 5.8 oz to 6.5 oz of drawbar. A bit better than the original motor and no added weight at 2.8 oz drawbar.
I forgot about the HO scale Rivarossi Heisler. I have one that will eventually be painted for my railroad. I have no idea what I will use it for, but it does run good.
I have an eight or ten car set of Rivarossi heavyweights undecorated with lighted interiors that might eventually be painted for my railroad. I have four of the NERS ice activated air conditioning kits for them. Each kit would do 2-3 cars, so I should have enough.
The Rivarossi Heavyweights I have came equipped with deep flange 31" wheels. 5 inches too small. IHC has replacement metal wheelsets with the RP-25 profile that drop right in. They are still too small, but track better.
I cannot see the wheels behind the passenger truck sideframes anyway, certainly after they are weathered, so the undersize does not bother me.
I used Kadee 36" wheels in most of my Rivarossi passenger cars, while the rest got replacement trucks. If you use the 36" wheels, the brakeshoes on the sideframe casting will need to be shaved a bit, so that they don’t act like actual brakes. A sharp #11 blade works well, as only a pass or two is necessary.
Must be a YOUNG Philly boy [:D] Prior to it being IHC, there was another company run by the same guy, called AHM. Most of AHM’s locos were Rivarossi products. As were their passenger cars and a lot of their other rolling stock. A few things were marked as being made by Pocher, which was a related company - notably the 4-4-0, and a similar 2-4-0 (there were 2 versions of the 4-4-0, an original, with long wood pilot and a balloon type stack, as built wood burner, and the moderized version of the same prototype which had a smaller pilot, a straight stack, and an oil tender. These were both based on a specific loco from the Virginia and Truckee railroad. As was the 2-4-0). Another Pocher product was a model of the Lincolf funeral car
Rivarossi made some big locos, like a Big Boy, Challenger, and the SP Cab Forwards. Also more moderate size locos like a Bershire and NYC Hudon - available in both plain and streamlined versions.
I had two of the 4-4-0’s, the Reno and the Genoa, and also the 2-4-0, the Bowker. And a streamlined Hudson. Biggest problem witht he tender drive locos was losing the drive shaft, if you are not careful when picking up the loco, the drawbar will flex sufficiently to allow it to drop right out. You can’t jackrabbit start them, the motor torque twists the whole tender and lifts one side off the rails. But the Reno in particular was probably the smoothest running loco I had at the time. I had some other old time rolling stock, both AHM and Tyco, and I would often use the Genoa, a horse car, a combine, and a coach to make the Wild Wild West train (the TV show with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin - still one of my favorite all time TV shows - not that horrible Will Smith movie).
Compared to the rest of the stuff we had back then, mostly Tyco and a little Life Like, the AHM/Rivarossi stuff was like fine art. By today’s standards they are probably considered fairly crude, and depending on just how old a particular piece i
Awersome response, Everyone! Thanks for taking the time. Really enjoyed it.
RANDY - I like the Robert Conrad/Ross Martin WWW show as well. Just wish I could find a decent source to stream it from. The ones on YouTube leave a little to be desired IMHO…
