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Ore Cars: A1G or not?
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George
Over the past year or so, I've been having a very interesting e-mail discussion with another A1G fan and accumulator.
The question at hand is whether the first run of ore cars that were marketed by Atlas were produced exclusively by Atlas, or whether they offered Rivarossi product under the Atlas name. In the latter case, that would make these cars Atlas First Generation. I thought I was going to have an answer on this when I scored a "three pack" of Atlas Ore Cars, catalog number 2499. It came from the UK via eBay and was one of several that this seller had available. Wait until you see photos of this pack, if you've not come across it before! (Which means I'd better get going on this...) These three cars came in the usual long plastic box with blue inlay. The insert label is the typical A1G type, and includes the verbiage "Made in Italy 11287 - 1-1970" which is certainly indicative of A1G product. The listing of other available items includes a few European items. But the ore cars themselves - LS&I 7893, Soo Line 81698 and Great Northern 95039 -- are all stamped "Atlas USA"! These three cars are among the four which were also offered as Atlas Kits (the fourth kit is the DM&IR 32816). Unlike later ore car issues which are no doubt post-A1G, these ore cars do not have simulated ore loads. Curiouser and curiouser... Cheers, George (your list-owner) |
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I would love it if Atlas went back to the "sans load" version, and sadly I only became interested in ore cars in the 1980s, so have none of the really "original" version. The other ore cars of the era made by/for Minitrix were not exactly the same if I recall. Could it be a case of "upperhandedness" or Atlas ensuring that ONLY they sold the ore cars? Hmmm...
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Thanks for this George, and get those photos! Dennis -- Dennis C. Kamper dckuk@... ---- George <gji@...> wrote: Over the past year or so, I've been having a very interesting e-mail discussion with another A1G fan and accumulator. |
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All of my early ore cars (the first roadnames offered without loads) have
Rivarossi-style trucks so that should add more intrigue. Unfortunately, I bought these second hand so I have no packaging for them. Of course, that could just mean that Rivarossi was supplying Atlas with trucks. Or does it mean that Atlas molded the carbodies and sent them to Italy to be lettered and trucked? Or does it mean Atlas molded and lettered them and sent them to Italy to have trucks installed (unlikely)? I guess I have always considered them to be A1G regardless because they first appeared well within the A!G period and the kits, which are the earliest incarnations but identical to the first four RTRs, appeared in what? 1968? Waiting to see the three-pack packaging. Doug |
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George
--- In a1g@..., dgosha@... wrote:
(snip)Ask and you shall receive... er, eventually. I have the photos uploaded to the A1G site but I haven't built the text page yet. For members here only, here is a sneak preview (well, assuming this works). From top to bottom: box with lid, box without lid, end of box with white class "Atlas" label. "The Collector's Guide to N Scale" by the late Barry Wingard does call out this three pack with those particular ore cars (GN, Soo Line, LS&I). I don't know what happened to the Missabe ore car. I should have paid closer attention to whether the eBay seller from whom I bought my copy of the 2499 had them in any other configuration, that is with the Missabe ore car instead of one of the other three. And by the way, the shade of brown on the GN in my three pack isn't the same as the one on the GN ore car I already owned, which was probably from a kit. Instant variation report... I guess if you call some 40 years from the date of release "instant." Well, it was new news to me! Cheers, George (list-owner) |
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Randy Bezet
Doug& Geoge et all,
Those ore cars are surely cool! I have never seen these before. The three pack ore car set are news to me.?The original bumper track package is neat too! Amazing what you can find on ebay even after all of these years. I found some of my A1G cars at a garage sale about ten years ago. I consider myself lucky that I have them! Thanks again for showing these cars. Sincerely, Randy B. ? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] |
Are the wheels on those black plastic or blackened metal?I'm trying hard to remember which had what back then, but I know I had a few cars, including some pieces I acquired USED in the early 1970's that had blackened metal wheels. And nothing other than Micro-Trains (well, nothing of note) as far as I can recall had plastic wheel. We where better off in that regard, even with humongous flanges, as my HO friends were suffering from crummy plastic wheels. I know MDC cars came with what we thought at the time were some of the best metal wheels for rtr or kits, with reasonable flanges as well, but they too were soon edged out by too-often useless plastic wheels... As for the blackened metal ones; it was nice to see them hang on, as I prefer metal wheels where I get an option, and blackened wheels didn't look so out of scale. Yeah I know the treads should be bright, but you can't have everything... Dennis England (by way of Chicago, Shreveport, and points west and north!) |
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George Irwin
They're blackened metal, but whether they were that way originally or turned color over time might be an open question.
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--George -----Original Message-----
From: dgosha@... |
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In a message dated 4/11/11 9:36:27 AM !!!First Boot!!!, dckuk@...
writes: I'm trying hard to remember which had what back then, but I know I had aThe Atlas car kits originally had plastic wheels which had horrible rolling qualities and I believe they began to supply a pair of trucks with silver metal wheels in them in the later kits before discontinuation. This may have even been a factor in discontinuing the kits as I'm sure having to put those trucks in the kits definitely reduced the profit margin considerably. As it was, even without the trucks, the retail price difference between a car kit and RTR was only $.21 except for the 50' cars which was $1.21 but I doubt the cost of producing a 50' RTR car was really that much more and the $2.50 retail price of those may have been a bit inflated. Doug |
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In a message dated 4/11/11 10:39:48 AM !!!First Boot!!!, gji@...
writes: They're blackened metal, but whether they were that way originally orI have seen some silver wheels discolor but never to the point of turning completely black. They could very well have come with the black wheels. Or somebody along the line could have used blackening on them. There were still some black wheels around at Atlas back then, though. Doug |
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