True Line Trains: In business or kaput?

[tstage]

That sounds right to me, Dave. I do recollect it being in the same issue.

Tom

[cv_acr]

@cv-acr

Thanks. Yes I was aware of the Walthers bulkhead and while I have not researched them, they do appear very similar to the TLT bulkhead I have looked at. Eventually I would like to add a BC scheme if any are appropriate for the late 1970’s.

Most of these cars were built in the early to mid 1970s, so almost all of them.

Pacific Great Eastern changed their name to British Columbia Railway in 1972, and then to BC Rail in 1984. So any PGE/PGER* or BCOL/BCIT* car will work as long as it does NOT have the later “BC Rail” logo on it.

CN and NAFX (North American Car Co.) will also do. Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific is a CN subsidiary and DWC* cars mix with CN cars fairly freely.

Algoma Central is also era-appropriate but comes from the other direction, being a regional in Ontario. (Serves a large steel mill as well as a couple of lumber mills, so possible to be seen throughout the US as well.)

• PGER, BCIT and DWC are “International Service” reporting marks and would be particularly appropriate for cross-border traffic on a US layout. However the regular PGE and BCOL marked cars would certainly also end up with loads to the US.

[cv_acr]

I might be wrong, but didn’t True-Line Trains start out as the Canadian segment of Life-Like / Proto?

I don’t think they were actually the same company but there is a family connection between True Line Trains and Canadian Hobbycraft. CH was responsible for a lot of Canadian Proto2000 and 1000 models from Life-Like.

[riogrande5761]

Chris, thanks for the era related info on the Walters bulkheads.

[JusTrains]

In August 2020, Atlas Trains announced they acquired pretty much all the product tooling and molds from TLT, so I’m under the impression the boys have bit the dust. The report was covered by Trains in this link:

https://www.trains.com/mrr/news-reviews/news/atlas-acquires-ho-n-tooling-from-true-line-trains/

(sigh) It’s sad. Glad I managed to get a few of their products when I did.

[tstage]

I have a very distant hope that Atlas will decide to take up what TLT didn’t finish - i.e. releasing the offset cupola NYC & Rutland cabooses. I don’t believe molds were ever produced for those so the possibility of that happening is pretty much nil.

Tom

[wjstix]

Here’s a link to the announcement as posted on the Atlas website:

https://shop.atlasrr.com/b-atlas-acquires-true-line-trains-molds.aspx

BTW apparently I was right about the Life-Like / True Line connection…[;)]

“Formerly known as Life-Like of Canada, True Line Trains was started in 2003 after the purchase of Life-Like by Walthers. They produced HO and N scale models of Canadian and US prototypes.”