Hi all! I posted this on a Facebook group, but I feel I should share it with you guys too.
Something a little different. I’m a model railroader, and I’m always looking for additions to the collection. This one is HO scale history. What you’re looking at is an early fifties Athearn metal and wood boxcar, built from a kit. It’s got a wooden core with thin steel stampings for sides, roof and ends. Stamped steel doors, ladders, and door guides too.
About eight years ago, I bought a parts lot that included a number of pairs of steel lithographed sides for these kits, still in their wrappers. I saw this boxcar at a local show a few years ago and remembered I had a new set of B&O Sentinel sides, so I bought this car for $5 knowing I could restore it.
Well, I removed one old side, and to my surprise, a previous owner had written his name inside.
“Art Tomlinson, 27 Forest St, St. John’s Newfoundland”. And a date. “6-2-50”
So I Google up the name, and find an obituary. Arthur Jay Tomlinson, 11/10/1928-11/10/2017… St. John’s, NFLD. He died on his birthday the year I bought the car. He would have been 21 when he built it.
It really hit home when I took that side off the car and found the inscription. This belonged to someone tangible; they had a name. Why that particular car? Perhaps it caught the guy’s eye in its flashy silver and blue. Maybe he was a model builder. Maybe he had a layout; maybe not. According to his obituary he was involved w
That’s a really neat story. I was just thinking of that last night as I added some weights to the inside of some boxcars that I was tuning up. One I popped open had a date of April 15, 1995 that I had written inside when I built the car. Twenty five years to-the-day.
I have several brass cars that have former owners ID scratched into them. One has the fellow’s social security number etched into it.
Another brass car I bought had a receipt tucked inside from a hobby shop in New Jersey, a sticker on the inside box lid from another brass dealer on the west coast and on the bottom of the box was a rubber stamp from Don Thomas, a hobby dealer right here in Chardon Ohio where I live. That car traveled more than the real one.
I had a similar feeling of connection, though it wasn’t unknown. When my eldest brother died young (36), I lost my brother, friend, and mentor, all rolled into one. He’d come back to our home town, after serving in the USAF during the Korean War, all fired up for HO Scale Model Railroading. After his passing, his widow passed on to me a couple of cigar boxes (remember them?) full of tools, plus several kit boxes of various leftover parts and specialized wood, plus several partially finished Central Valley old-time boxcars and a reefer, along with a Mantua “1960” combine with a rectangular hole in its roof. I finished the Central Valley kits (some of the missing parts were in one of the kit boxes), applying Kadee Magnematics, then reworked the hole in the combine roof to take a Silver Streak cupola casting–after adding seats and a bulkhead to the car. Hardly anybody noticed the Central Valley cars, but people usually noticed the “passenger car” with a caboose cupola. And every time I looked at it I remembered my enthusiastic Big Bro, who taught me so much about tools, cars, model railoading—and life.
Wow, that’s really cool! I love going to used hobby shops and looking at really old cars, but I’ve never though to wonder about where these cars have previously been!
I have one of the old Athearn tin sided boxcars that is actually in pretty good shape. I love it!
I have a set of four Star Line stock cars that were built from kits sometime in the late 1940s or early 50s. They were a bit rough when I got them, but the original assembly was done superbly! I would love to know who built the kits originally. They were pretty good at their craft!
What an interesting story and find about that Athearn metal boxcar.
I have found some old hobby shop receipts in kit boxes that I have bought used - the older the more interesting they are.
A few words about the Athearn metal freight car kits. They used a style of construction (including some tab-in-slot) that was shared with Varney in HO as well as All Nation in O scale. Indeed at one time Athearn was big in O scale and they may have had similar metal kits in 1/4" scale for all I know I believe a firm whose name I cannot recall initially acquired the HO Athearn metal line after Athearn dropped it - and eventually a firm called Menzies brought back the line, or at least a good part of it, in the 1970s and into the 80s.
They are fun to build, and with care - you need to get all the connections really tight to avoid unsightly gaps between sides and ends for example - they still look pretty good. Note that the boxcar doors are not only pretty close to scale thickness but are in small channels so the big “claws” that Athearn used for their (much thicker) plastic boxcar doors were avoided. When Menzies took over the line I bought a lot of their boxcars doors which were sold as separate parts for future replacement of the doors on the plastic kits. They also look good as stacked spare boxcar doors at a RIP track or car repair facility. For one thing the corrugations are there inside and out!
There are separate grab irons and separate ladders – that is one reason why for a lot of modelers, the advent of plastic seemed like a step backwards in realism. I remember a Model Railroader cartoon with two railroad brakemen talking, and one has his arm in a sling. “I thought it was a grab iron but it was just a nasty ridge of plastic!” he says.
The running boards are pretty good looking too. Perhaps a bit brittle.
The other feature is that you can actually assemble the
I have acquired a couple of items on eBay that were listed as from estate sales. One was a few Type 21 tank cars, new in the box. The other was an old passenger car, a boat-end observation car that matched a set I had. Someone had added illumination.
These belonged to modelers in years gone by. They likely ran on layouts now dismantled and being sold as parts. As such, I feel that items like this deserve some special respect from all of us, perhaps a more visible site for a structure or a prominent place in a frequently run train.
I have an old Varney boxcar, mostly all-metal. which I received new, in 1955, along with a number of other cars and locomotives.
It was originally painted in NYC’s “Pacemaker” red and grey, but I later painted over it and lettered it with CPR’s “script-style” lettering.
More recently, I decided to upgrade it a bit to better fit in with my more recent models…
…and here it is, repainted and lettered, using C-D-S dry transfers…
I think that the signature which you found in the boxcar may not be all that unusual, as I’ve come across a few over the years, and a friend, to whom I’ve given several older cars from various sources (kit-built, r-t-r, and scratchbuilt) also puts information in those cars.
In fact, he often asks about the maker of the car and, if I know it, the date or at least timeframe in which it might have been manufactured or scratchbuilt. He also wants, if I can provide it, the name of the manufacturer or scratchbuilder.
This info is written on paper and enclosed in the car (or under it, for open cars) and/or is included in the car’s box, whether it’s original or a replacement.
I’m not so fussy, but do have an all-time roster of cars and locomotives which I’ve owned over the years,
If I may? The oddest thing I ever found in a boxcar was a folded $10.00 bill… I assumed that was hobby money hid from his wife?
As far as those old Athearn metal cars they are still a decent car for their age and can blend in with Athearn BB,Roundhouse, Varney, and other like cars.
You’re lucky that’s all you found. A number of year’s ago a long time club member passed away. He wanted a portion of his ashes placed on the club layout in one of those brass water tanks. Several other members thought that a good idea.
That’s not the best part. The other portion of his request was to have the remaining ashes thrown into the firebox of a steam locomotive. They found a willing participant. As I understand it they were standing in front of the boiler with the container open, but someone opened the firebox door before they could say any appropriate words. I’m told that the draft sucked everything right out of their hands. So he probably got his wish to be blown out the stack.
Which not only reminds me of a memorable scene from the film The Big Lebowski, but also of an urban legend concerning a President of the PRR whose ashes were scattered perhaps at Horseshoe Curve – a few days before a ballast cleaning crew came through. Sounds like roundhouse humor but who knows?
There was another memorable scene from the show Hill Street Blues. Phil wants his ashes dumped in the center of New York City, which is apparently not allowed. So after much consideration the rest of the officers meet at night, disobey the law, and have a little ceremony. Just as they drive away, a street sweeper turns the corner…
