Re: [CBQ] Bev-Bel Blackhawk Car?

["Charlie Vlk" <cvlk@comcast.net>]

 

All-

People always think that Athearn ran their product frequently.

It only seemed that way because of the condition of the Hobby in the 1950s and a couple of decades after.

There were many more Hobby Distributors that had product on their shelves and actually stocked merchandise.

Likewise, there were many more retail stores that likewise stocked product….not just LHS, but department stores, bike shops, and other types of stores that maintained hobby departments.

Athearn’s practice of not changing road names, paint jobs and road numbers also contributed to the illusion.  You could be buying a kit that was ten years old or just came from the factory.

Athearn only had Model Die Casting /Roundhouse as competition….with AHM, Tyco and other pure trainset companies also rans.  

 

Kar-Line had a nice business of painting and decaling Athearn and MDC kits, assembling them with Kadee couplers and offering them in road names, paint schemes that Athearn wouldn’t touch. 

They made people realize that you didn’t need duplicate box cars on your railroad.

Charlie Vlk

 

Athearn ran their kits in batches. They kept no inventory. They would wait until they received enough orders and then run the kit. So if they ran their 40 foot steel boxcar, it might be 2-3 years at least before they would run it again. Also until the last 15 years or so of doing kits they would run the same road number over and over again. Bev-Bel would paint Athearn undecorated cars and then make the road numbers different on each run. They would also offer road names that could or could not be prototype for the car, but Athearn would not run.

This web site has some information on past Athearn production:

<http://ho-scaletrains.com/>

It is done by the same folks who do HO Collector magazine.

Bill Hirt

On 1/8/2019 8:28 AM, Douglas Harding wrote:

True the Athearn cars are 72’ long, not the prototype 85’. This was done to run on the sharp curves, ie 18”-22”, that were common on the sheet of plywood layouts when Athearn first issued these cars.

 

Bev-Bel offered a lot of paint schemes on Athearn cars, because Athearn was about the only game in town for HO freight cars. Bev-Bel filled a nitch for folks looking for their favorite road names which Athearn did not offer. Prototype fidelity was not a concern back in the day, after all a boxcar was a boxcar was a boxcar. Or in this case a passenger car was a passenger car was a passenger car.

 

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