I was visiting a friend Frank in Buffalo and his brother-in-law Tom Gascoigne, who owned Buffalo Creek Graphics, came over to visit. We started talking and he then proceeded to show me a red and black A&A boxcar. I asked Tom about the history of this car, and in 2009 in preparation for the 2009 Nickle Plate Road HTS convention being held in the Buffalo area. Tom wanted to do a special boxcar for the A&A because one of the convention events was going to be riding the A&A.
For this car, instead of using Weaver undecorated boxcars Tom selected Atlas O model X-29 boxcars because that is what the A&A prototypes actually were. And thus this became the first and only B.C.G. car that used an Atlas undecorated model. The run of the cars was limited to 5, and as a result the production costs were high. Another guy named John did the artwork and graphics, and the painting was done by Weaver Models. Frank got one (which I was shown during my visit), Tom got one, one was given to George Ling (GM of the A&A railroad) and the other two were given away as raffle gifts at the convention. I offered to Tom and Frank to purchase their cars, as I collect A&A stuff, but both refused. But wait... there's more!
Fast forward to mid-November and on Ebay the red A&A boxcar showed up. It was being sold by a company in North Tonawanda. How could this be? Would Frank or Tom actually sell their models of this car a short time after I offered to purchase them and not offer me first rights? And it had scale wheels, not tinplate wheels, which was odd. Out of a 5 car run, did one of them have scale wheels? Well, I called Frank right away and we talked some more. This car wasn't his... he again repeated he would never sell his. Instead, it was Tom's car, because his was the only car with scale wheels. As it happened, Tom had previously arranged for some of his collection to be sold by an auction house before I met them all and this car was next up on the auction block. He didn't even realize. Sadly, Tom passed away only a few months later.
But, this is probably the rarest car in my collection as only 5 were made, and only one was produced with scale wheels. For more on my other rare A&A cars: https://dandhcoloniemain.blogs...rare-arcade-and.html
