03-29-2014, 03:09 PM
I went to the Western Prototype Modelers meet in San Bernardino this morning. Either this one is much worse than the better-publicized ones in Naperville, Cocoa Beach, and so forth, or the others are wildly overrated. The usual guys working within their comfort zones and high-fivin' each other for it.
You got five bucks off the admission If you brought three models. That would be five bucks I could spend at the swap meet, so I brought some:
I had a good day at the swap, which almost made the admission to the WPM worth it. Picked up several things on my watch list, like this (I think) Athearn metal 4-truck heavy duty flat:
Oddly, it has paper sides, more like a Red Ball, but I think the metal is zamac, so it's likely very early Athearn. I don't believe PRR had anything like this, so I will probably replace the paper sides with styrene and repaint it for D&H, which did have cars like this.
I always look for the Tru-Scale, later Walthers, plastic work cars, and found two, $4 each (like the heavy duty flat):
And an odd surprise. Tyco flat cars are always on my watch list (the yellow log car in the first photo was made from a Tyco); I picked this one up just assuming it was Tyco. When I got it home and took a closer look, it pretty clearly looked like Bachmann has added better-quality trucks and body mounted couplers to the original Tyco die work. Sure is Tyco, via Bachmann:
I always thought the Tyco plastic die work deserved to be brought back.
You got five bucks off the admission If you brought three models. That would be five bucks I could spend at the swap meet, so I brought some:
I had a good day at the swap, which almost made the admission to the WPM worth it. Picked up several things on my watch list, like this (I think) Athearn metal 4-truck heavy duty flat:
Oddly, it has paper sides, more like a Red Ball, but I think the metal is zamac, so it's likely very early Athearn. I don't believe PRR had anything like this, so I will probably replace the paper sides with styrene and repaint it for D&H, which did have cars like this.
I always look for the Tru-Scale, later Walthers, plastic work cars, and found two, $4 each (like the heavy duty flat):
And an odd surprise. Tyco flat cars are always on my watch list (the yellow log car in the first photo was made from a Tyco); I picked this one up just assuming it was Tyco. When I got it home and took a closer look, it pretty clearly looked like Bachmann has added better-quality trucks and body mounted couplers to the original Tyco die work. Sure is Tyco, via Bachmann:
I always thought the Tyco plastic die work deserved to be brought back.