I’m looking for a product list for the Train Miniature Company of La Mesa California. Particularly Reefers and the Billboard Nostalgia 3-car sets. Any help would be greatly appreciated
The last I heard, TM had been bought by Walthers, some years ago. Very little of their product shows up in the current Walther’s catalogue, which is a pity, since they made some really fine freight equipment. I have a number of TM cars that I purchased when the company was still operating under their own name, and I like them–they can certainly hold up to anything produced today. Frankly, I wish Walthers would either resurrect the dies or sell them to someone else so that we could have these cars on the market again.
Tom [V][V]
First, there were at least 3 incarnations of Train Miniature and the production varied depending on who the owner was at the time. The origins of the line go back to Truscale(yes the track people) and the various work train cars. While the cars look pretty good many are not particularly accurate of anything and most of the paint jobs were totally bogus - tobacco - beer and many others. While they may be collectible (and are) as far as todays market, Walthers pretty much milked out anything they could. Also by now the molds are very very old and probably not much good. This is why Walthers is tooling up new cars all the time. It will be interesting to see if anybody can come up with any kind of list.
Yup…three versions of TM. As for a list, the best I’ve seen is online at the NEB&W website of HO scale freight cars (the single best modelling resource online). It’s a pay site, but welll worth $5 a month.
http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/
A quick look shows dozens of pages for TM cars, divided up by car type. It’s probably as good a listing as you’ll find.