Model Railroading in the 50s and 60s.


So, it was a plot by Walthers to get N & Z in the HO Catalog, all along and it only took them 12-15 years to enact, then?
 
I don't know when they started including N & Z in their HO catalog, and they did still have a lot of existing Athearn inventory for a while after Horizon pulled the plug. As I posted earlier, I don't have or never had a Walthers catalog, so I don't know the timing. My LHS was still getting Athearn from Walther's at a reduced price as late as 2008 or 2009, although there wasn't much variety by then. He used to relate how the Horizon saleslady would eyeball his inventory whenever she stopped by, to see if he was still getting Athearn stuff from Walther's. He always claimed that he was buying inventory from defunct shops if she questioned him. It was all blue-box stuff anyway which Horizon eventually quit making. She was happy to sell him all the RTR equipment.
As far as Walther's doing OK, they will always do OK. They are one of the few manufacturers of plastic structures that really are large enough to justify rail service. Heck! I have 30+ of their large RR served industries.

Willie
 
The inclusion of N & Z into the HO Catalog happened just this year, in the 2017 Catalog. I was very disappointed when Horizon Hobbies took over Athearn and MDC-Roundhouse. I knew from experience in the R/C Airplane hobby how Horizon operated and was not impressed! It seemed very stupid on Horizon's part to exclude a whole sale distributor from their operations. However, for Horizon Hobbies, they seem to have been successful with this change. I don't like Horizon Hobbies and have my own reasons for this. I have been able to do fine without doing business with them. I will buy old Blue Box and MDC Roundhouse equipment when I have a need for them. I want kits and Horizon only wants to supply RTR. So, never the twain shall meet!
 
Mark,
As a fellow RC aviator (I really need to get that PT-60 finished) I know and agree with what you are saying regarding Horizon. It's a shark eat shark world out there. Guillow's bought out Comet, then shut them down. Testors did the same with competing paint companies. Super Tigre is now history. Sadly, the entire hobby market is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few.
 
Mark,
Interesting. I haven't purchased a single Athearn product since the Horizon takeover. Personal prejudice. On the Walther's catalog, its smaller for a number of reasons. First is thinner paper. Probably a cost savings measure, but the pages are weak. Then, they have reduced the number of illustrations of non-Walthers products. Concor had a rant on their website about how many photos they provided to Walthers versus how few were actually used. Then there is Cal Scale, which in past years had photos of each part, but now only lists the part number and description e.g. 123-456 Pyle headlight $3.50. Not much help there. Not sure if its an editorial decision on Walthers part or that they (Walthers) want too much money to provide illustrations. I used to buy Walthers catalog every year, but when the catalog price went to $35, I stopped. I've only gotten it twice since then - one was free with an order from an online dealer, the other is the current one, just to see if I've been missing anything.
 
Back to the Model Railroading in the 50s and 60s, even though I have moved into the 70s. The April 1973 issue has a large ten page article on John Allen. John had died January 6th of the new year from a heart attack. John had battled with heart problems most of his life. The article, written by Linn Westcott, discusses the innovative thinking and abilities which John used to build his three model railroad layouts. John's profession was as a professional commercial photographer. He also invested very well, never married; or, had any children. This allowed him the free time to do exactly as he wanted and he enjoyed the hobby of model railroading. John was not a braggart and disliked those who were. That John's Gorre and Daphetid model railroad was famous and is still famous today, there can be no doubt. The G&D Line broke onto the model railroading scene because of the photos John took that became catalog covers and their use in both Model Railroader and Model Railroad Craftsman Magazine.

Only having had two Model Railroader Magazines in my youth and neither had photos of the G&D in them, I'm unsure of where my first exposure to John Allen occurred. However, the photo of French Gulch, seems to be stuck in my head and was the inspiration I needed to keep me involved in this hobby.
 
Willie - I finally got a new Walthers catalog this year. My old one was a bit out of date from 1998. So many new products are available now that weren't even around in '98. Without the catalog the only information I get on new products are from model railroad magazines as I have no hobby shops at all near me. I am to the point on my layout where I want to add more details and mini scenes and there are a wealth of new items today compared to years ago.
 
50's-60's were post war era times, the guys at home were experts and builders, not a whole lot of rtr at the time but the Athearn quick kits and so on worked out. Poke in the old magazine you can see some layouts with mega slip switches at a terminal, all hand laid.

Thats what it was all about.
 
Dinwitty, The era was referred to as the "Baby Boomer Era". I don't think the guys at home where necessarily "experts"; but, they were builders and unafraid of learning how to be modelers. It wasn't Athearn kits alone that where successful. Train Miniatures and MDC Roundhouse, Mantua, Varney and Walthers where also successful to name a couple more manufacturers of quick build kits. Then there where Silver Streak, La belle's, Ambroid and many other wood kit builders providing many choices to the modelers of the times. Atlas, Tru-Scale, Bachmann, tyco, etc. where providing sectional and flex-track for the builder who lacked interest in laying his own track. Having been around back then, I feel it was a great time to have been a Model Railroader. I admire the many modelers who became famous for building model railroads back then; John Allen, Jack Work, John Armstrong, Linn Westcott, Chuck Youngkurth and Frank Ellison, to name a few!
 
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I had forgotten to mention that I started seeing structures from Fine Scale Miniatures back in the mid 1950s. Impressive that George Sellios has been producing such wonderful kits for so long! I am completing 1973 now and Linn Westcott is still the Editor of Model Railroader and Pacific fast Mail is still on the back cover of the magazine.

In September of 1973 I was living at my sister's place between Cody Wyoming and Yellowstone Park. A friend of mine who I had met out there had a Sister In-law who would shortly become my wife of 39 years. Living in the mountains and the mountains themselves was something I found I truly love!

I have been very impressed by the amount of "Gadgets' People have come up with for model railroading. Considering that DCC was still on the horizon, people where very interest in things such as Turn Table Indexing, Train Detection, Signalling, Constant Lighting, Sound, etc., etc... I think that this shows how industrious and imaginative model railroaders have always been. We tend to look upon our current times with a miss-directed conceit about where we are and what we are capable of, when great things where occurring and being invented way back when!
 
NP2626 said:
I had forgotten to mention that I started seeing structures from Fine Scale Miniatures back in the mid 1950s. Impressive that George Sellios has been producing such wonderful kits for so long! I am completing 1973 now and Linn Westcott is still the Editor of Model Railroader and Pacific fast Mail is still on the back cover of the magazine.

In September of 1973 I was living at my sister's place between Cody Wyoming and Yellowstone Park. A friend of mine who I had met out there had a Sister In-law who would shortly become my wife of 39 years. Living in the mountains and the mountains themselves was something I found I truly love!

I have been very impressed by the amount of "Gadgets' People have come up with for model railroading. Considering that DCC was still on the horizon, people where very interest in things such as Turn Table Indexing, Train Detection, Signalling, Constant Lighting, Sound, etc., etc... I think that this shows how industrious and imaginative model railroaders have always been. We tend to look upon our current times with a miss-directed conceit about where we are and what we are capable of, when great things where occurring and being invented way back when!
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Very cool info Mark! What was the popular magazine back in the 50's and more to my playing with trains in the 60's. Was it MRR or some that may have gone out of business. Would love to get some at a tag sale and see what was had back then for articles and ads. I didnt keep in touch with it until recently.
 
Tony, As far as I can remember. all there was that I knew of, was Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman back in the 1950s and 60s. I can't even tell you if there were model railroading magazines that went out of business. Ebay would be a place to find actual magazines. However, what I'm doing is looking through the "All time Digital Archive" in which you can read all 999 issues of MR and soon to be 1,000 issues, as of the April issue!
 
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I am looking through the 1974 issues. I find interesting articles written by people with a great eye towards producing authentic looking businesses. There are many articles like this in these older Model Railroaders and some I have jotted down as reads I need to get back to sometime and maybe build some of these businesses for my layout. Now that I have added to my layout, I have a small area I am thinking I will scenic.

I've also hit upon a point of view I'm going to voice, that will likely be controversial: In post # 67, (Sorry Chet, not singling you out) Chet talks about new items available that weren't back in 1998 when he bought his last Walthers Catalog. Of course there are new products listed in every new year that Walthers produced a Catalog. My guess is that there is an almost overwhelming amount of new items contained in the 19 year space between 1998 and 2017. However, I'm of the opinion that the actual count of items available in the 2017 catalog, is less, compared to the 1998 catalog. Every year, I notice less and less detail parts being manufactured, fewer and fewer kits are shown and I think there is a lessening of what is available for the hobby and that this is very noticeable. It just stands to reason that this would be so. Why manufacture detail parts, if no one is building kits; or, super-detailing models, because the manufacturers are doing all this work for the modeler of today.

I know that some of you will take this as: That old NP2626 is into his "THE SKY IS FALLING, AGAIN" routine! Well, I don't believe the sky is falling! But, I feel it is very unobservant to think that times are not changing! The hobby is what it is and will be what it will be. I'm going to be Frank! I don't see the changes coming as necessarily good changes! I have no affect on these changes and am old enough that I don't care that they are taking place. As long as I find enough things to make me interested in this hobby, I will stay at it.

As you age, you see how things where and rightfully have a longing for those times. Probably the longing stems for the fact that old people wish they were younger again.
 
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NP2626 said:
I am looking through the 1974 issues. I find interesting articles written by people with a great eye towards producing authentic looking businesses. There are many articles like this in these older Model Railroaders and some I have jotted down as reads I need to get back to sometime and maybe build some of these businesses for my layout. Now that I have added to my layout, I have a small area I am thinking I will scenic.

I've also hit upon a point of view I'm going to voice, that will likely be controversial: In post # 67, (Sorry Chet, not singling you out) Chet talks about new items available that weren't back in 1998 when he bought his last Walthers Catalog. Of course there are new products listed in every new year that Walthers produced a Catalog. My guess is that there is an almost overwhelming amount of new items contained in the 19 year space between 1998 and 2017. However, I'm of the opinion that the actual count of items available in the 2017 catalog, is less, compared to the 1998 catalog. Every year, I notice less and less detail parts being manufactured, fewer and fewer kits are shown and I think there is a lessening of what is available for the hobby and that this is very noticeable. It just stands to reason that this would be so. Why manufacture detail parts, if no one is building kits; or, super-detailing models, because the manufacturers are doing all this work for the modeler of today.

I know that some of you will take this as: That old NP2626 is into his "THE SKY IS FALLING, AGAIN" routine! Well, I don't believe the sky is falling! But, I feel it is very unobservant to think that times are not changing! The hobby is what it is and will be what it will be. I'm going to be Frank! I don't see the changes coming as necessarily good changes! I have no affect on these changes and am old enough that I don't care that they are taking place. As long as I find enough things to make me interested in this hobby, I will stay at it.

As you age, you see how things where and rightfully have a longing for those times. Probably the longing stems for the fact that old people wish they were younger again.
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Even though I have not been involved with this train hobby very long (but have looked through many of the Walthers Flyers going back 10 years or so) I think you are very correct Mark. I have been a static model builder since my childhood and have picked it up many times over the last 50 years. There is definitely a major decline in all of these hobbies (based on building) and it will continue.

The ease of the computer has not only made things better for us, but worse in so many other ways. With kids (and I am a parent) the net has changed things.... I will not go into detail because I know common sense among yourselves already answered.... why the joy of building things is declining in a rapid way. Like my dad said.. you do the math.
In aging as you said, right again, it was better, we had less, but did more... more being the operative word.
 
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NP2626 said:
However, I'm of the opinion that the actual count of items available in the 2017 catalog, is less, compared to the 1998 catalog. Every year, I notice less and less detail parts being manufactured, fewer and fewer kits are shown and I think there is a lessening of what is available for the hobby and that this is very noticeable. It just stands to reason that this would be so. Why manufacture detail parts, if no one is building kits; or, super-detailing models, because the manufacturers are doing all this work for the modeler of today.

I know that some of you will take this as: That old NP2626 is into his "THE SKY IS FALLING, AGAIN" routine! Well, I don't believe the sky is falling! But, I feel it is very unobservant to think that times are not changing! The hobby is what it is and will be what it will be. I'm going to be Frank! I don't see the changes coming as necessarily good changes! I have no affect on these changes and am old enough that I don't care that they are taking place. As long as I find enough things to make me interested in this hobby, I will stay at it.

As you age, you see how things where and rightfully have a longing for those times. Probably the longing stems for the fact that old people wish they were younger again.
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That totally stands to reason since over the past 20 years there has been an explosion of RTR rolling stock and even some buildings so the demand for detail parts has dropped off. Add to that, the companies making them were small operations such as Details West or Details Associates, where the owners have one by one retired or passed away. Cannon, thankfully was taken over by Dave Hussey, when Gordon Cannon passed away. So some of the dwindling of detail companies isn't necessarily all due to the RTR explosion but they were/are cottage industries where the owners are retiring or passing away.

It is what it is. I am probably 10 years away from retirement (assuming I am able to retire) and I can tell you, until then time is scarce for me to do all the many necessary things to get a layout built, populated, scenic'd and all that. I spent the last few months building some train kits before returning back to the layout. Time is a precious commodity unless you are retired and have lot's of it, which probably explains the popularity of the much hated (by some) RTR genre.

I don't think most people cannot see that times are changing - it's more a matter of whether that's a good thing or not. IMO, what with the variety of past products (still available on the secondary market to those who have the mad skills to find those things) and present products - we are walking in high cotton. I am btw, aging, and sure, I long for some things from the "good ol days" but it's more for old fashioned values rather than old fashioned kits the I never had time to build very many of.

As for as changes coming down the tracks ... the only change I can see which really does threaten the hobby is raising tariffs on imported products from China. Jason Shron of Rapido had some sobering comments on that here:

http://atlasrescueforum.proboards.com/thread/5319/usa?page=2
 
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How is it that I know for a fact that I was as busy as anyone alive, while I was working. I was a member of service clubs, church, owned a home, raised two boys, coached Little League, owned two businesses (not simultaneously) and yet, I had time to have fun building a layout; or, building and flying Radio Controlled Model Airplanes. I worked hard my whole life, just like my parents did and their parents before them. To state that folks today are working harder and longer and that TIME is so much more scarcer than it ever was, I find to be just plain "BULL"!

We make the time to do the things we want to do!

And, I don't hate RTR, I do hate that for all practical purposes RTR has supplanted kits and you guys who claim you don't have the time it takes to put together a simple freight car (10-15 minutes) are the ones driving the market!
 
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1974 was a Hallmark year for Model Railroader, it had been in publication now for 40 years and there was a campaign to celebrate this fact. Linn Wescott is still the editor and the magazine is still published by A. C. Kalmbach. There are new retail outlets being advertised and old ones are still the staples. Bowser has been bought-out and the factory has been moved to Montoursville PA. (this may have happened years before now). Train Miniatures is a large manufacturer of Plastic Rolling Stock Kits. There is a large retailer named "Hobby People" and another named "Hobbies for Men". I am starting to see advertisements for Con Cor. I've seen my first advertisement for "Standard hobby Supply", my first retailer that I bought all of my Track, Turnouts and Cork Roadbed from although this would still be 14 years in the future. When you bought something from "Standard hobby Supply", a part of the packaging material was always a Catalog with current pricing for everything they sold. Their prices where always very competitive and shipping cost where reasonable. Standard went out of business in May of 2010. Looking at the Era most represented by the items advertised Steam still seems to rule the model railroad rails. Although diesels painted up in Bi-Centennial colors are starting to show up, seeing as we are only two years away from the Bi-Centennial. Atlas is still on the inside of the back cover and PFM is still on the back!
 
Mark. About making time to do what we want. If it were only that simple. Consider yourself lucky that you had a wife who allowed you to do what you wanted. I took that attitude with my first wife and tried to do the things I wanted; suffice it to say she was hostile toward the hobby. The result, a long separation and eventual divorce, a very low standard of living for many years in tiny apartments or basements with no room for that "holy" layout, exorbitant child support and private school payments that I couldn't afford and ended up eventually depending on family members to help me. But my ex was a prima donna, daughter of a lawyer and bilked me away from having that "leave it to beaver" life you were so fortunate to have.

Hard work and doing all the right things doesn't work out for everyone. My second wife went through the meat grinder in her growing up years in the poorest part of England, with a bipolar mother who gave a concussion to my wife's brother and there was a lot of abuse in her family; her father grew up in an abusive home and later when raising my wife and her brothers, gambled all the families money away - so my wife had not control over that when she was growing up. My wife was abused when young. Due her mother's bipolar problems and violence, child protective services removed all the kids from the home, my wife went into a care home at age 14 and was independent at 16. A few years later she was unfortunate enough to get hooked up with a guy who seemed very nice at first but ended up physically abusing her and because she was in fear for her life, it took a few years for her to eventually she went into a women's shelter and a protection order against her ex and the place anonymously in an apartment. She ended up raising her 2 kids raised to kids on her own and her ex provided NO child support to her at all during those years - we found out a couple years ago he beat up his current partner so badly her face was fractured and he "finally" got some jail time for it. My wife's back eventually went and she came down with some health issues that caused her to be medically retired in England to the point her kids thought she was going to die. Fortunately she recovered and is my wife now and she does support my hobby but I've also learned that she needs support and care so I can't make all the time you had or have.

It isn't just about working hard and making time - it's about a whole lot of things working to give you the conditions to pursue the hobby in the manner you have. I read about people all the time on forums that simply can't do what you did - the world has changed since "leave it to beaver". There are many social ills, broken families - and many times not the fault of the hobbyist, job demands. Heck, even if my first wife wasn't so hostile, making time would have been difficult since I was on the road so much of the time as a geologist - how can you work on a layout if you out of town working all the time? Now if I was lucky enough to have a supportive wife for all those years you have had, and was stable and in the same house for many years, maybe I would have all that time you had to enjoy the hobby. Life dealt me a different hand; if you have any empathy, realize that others, for many reasons, weren't born in to that idealistic life - you know, the majority of people in the world work hard and end up getting crap for it rather than "leave it to beaver". I would be nice to live in that bubble that some live in but the world is full of a lot of grief that often people have little control over - time and hard work - if it were only that simple.

So how does all that relate to this topic? Well, the good ol days weren't always so good unless you were fortunate enough to have the conditions to enjoy a hobby like this without the threat of violence, poverty, instability, dysfunctional family members or spouses, etc. Having RTR products does allow some to devote what little hobby time they have now a days to working on things like a layout. Many people just can't find the time to do everything from scratch or kits, it's a basic fact. All you have to do is talk to people and they will tell you. If you think there is something wrong with them that they can't do what some of you do or did, well it's reality. Maybe if you think you can fix their brokenness so they can be like you, please be a part of the solution.
 
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Rio Grande, I find your response so disagreeable I will not respond, other than to say I'm sorry your life has been so terrible for you! As an aside, I've had my share of knock downs in life, too. However, I really wouldn't want to discuss my problems, as no matter how they're described, it always comes across making the person telling the story out to be a whiner.
 
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