Any Vintage HO Collectors Here?

I suppose that some would call my stuff vintage.  I have some brass imports from the 1960s and 1970s.  I should have sold them a long time ago.

NH Joe

I have one each of what I've been told was the last custom run of boxcars and reefers from Varney. My father was working for the National Brewing Co. in the mid 60's when a little Christmas "bonus" was given out: a white wood sided reefer and a red steel sided boxcar, both marked "National Bohemian".

No, sorry, I don't have pictures. I can't be the only one who has them. Anybody else?

NH Joe: Vintage HO brass is cool. Wish I'd kept my Hallmark Baldwin VO1000 I purchased back in 1970. Didn't run worth a crap, but some good memories attached to it.

artyoung: Varney is very tempting, as is vintage Revell. Oh, and vintage Athearn sets... and...

However, I must be strong. Vintage HO can get too obsessive.

What the heck... might as well post some pics of one of my recent Lindberg Lines purchase...

The above set is almost identical to my original Lindberg Lines set that I received for that wonderful Christmas of 1962.  However, mine was the "deluxe" set (had two more cars).  NOT to worry, though, Lindberg used the same box for both the basic and deluxe sets... so simply remove the yellow filler box at the bottom, insert the two additional cars... and it looks just like the set I received in '62! (Yup, I have the cars on hand that are needed, and I will be adding them to the set once I do a bit of restoration work on the rolling stock box that will contain one of them.)

Confession: I'm Having way too much fun dinking around collecting old Lindberg Lines stuff.

If it’s die-cast I probably like it, Mfg'ers like Penn Line, Varney, Bowser, and Mantua to name a few.  I got into it with a Varney F unit with a Lindsay motor from a flea market a few years back.  It has since snow balled into a small collection with several locomotives and a few pieces of rolling stock.

Hello Andre,

I have a "few" vintage HO sets...all kidding aside I wish I bought that Lindberg

service station "floor plan" set at York in April of 2014...probably wont see one of those again in our lifetime !

BT

I wish I had some of my HO trains from childhood.

PennLine: Don't get me started on Varney, Penn Line, et al!!! Stop it!

Bob:

Hi 'ya BT! Yup... you have a "few".  I recall that Lindberg Lines Service Station set being quite pricey for Lindberg.  BTW: Replied to your email.  Did you get it?  If not, perhaps your spam filter thinks I'm a spammer???

86TA355SR (whew... that's a toughie to type!):

What mfg'er(s) were they?  I'll bet they're "out there" if you want to re-gather 'em bad enough!

As for me, I'm "thinking" about starting to watch for an "in the (red) box" Tyco Santa Fe GP20 like I bought in '63. 

Now, there's no way to I want an operating layout of this vintage stuff, my new DCC/Sound equipped HO is SOOOO far superior... but I do like the warm fuzzies my vintage HO gives me when I look at, hold, smell (the engines) oogle, etc.

  I still have my first HO trains bought in 1957. Here's the Athearn GP7 and ATSF caboose. The loco came with a rubber band drive but many years ago it was converted to the common Athearn diesel gear drive......DaveB

Same here. 50s, 60s, and 70s brass. Very little after that. All steam and all but two are Southern Pacific. Brass engines, like British motorcycles proved to be a teaching platform. You either learned to fix them yourself or pay someone a lot of money to do it for you. Very few ran right out of the box.

Pete

My major HO interest is HO structure kits, that can be extrapolated into a scratchbuilt

O scale equivalent, as so MUCH more is available in HO.  However, I have a few older HO brass cabooses, Hallmark, etc., that are sidedoors or drovers for which I also want to do that, for that reason (much more available), extrapolate into O scale versions.  I haven't picked any of these up in years, and didn't pick up any of the more

expensive HO brass Mack railbuses, McKeen cars, etc., I also would like to extrapolate.

I have a few unbuilt Aristocraft building kits in nice, colorful boxes. And a few all metal signals.
I also have some Postwar Lionel HO.

Some Penn Line too.

As I mentioned in another thread, I got rid of my Modern era Lionel HO.

Here's a Bachmann model of the Central Pacific "Jupiter" which was purchased at a Two Guys after Christmas sale in the 70s.

Bob

So there ARE some of you others that are crazy too!

daveb: Vintage Athearn is neat. I really like the box art they used on their sets back in the 60s.

 "Vintage Athearn is neat. I really like the box art they used on their sets back in the 60s."

   Hi Andre, Yeah I wish I had the boxes for mine but I took the models out of the box and assembled them and put them on my layout and probably threw the boxes away. My mom kept all my HO stuff packed away in a trunk after I moved out and gave it back to me when I got a house many years later. ...DaveB

"Most of my heritage stuff is from the 1970s, so really not sure if that is considered heritage."

   It's heritage to those the same age as you now, keep it long enough and it will be heritage to anyone :>  I don't know what year they changed them but one can tell the early Athearn boxcars from the later ones even without a box. The older ones have doors that slide in glued on guides instead of the claws of later stuff, they also have screw on coupler box covers instead of the spring clips ,and they have rubber spring inserts instead of real coil springs...DaveB

I had some Mantua Metals from my uncle and a few that were mine from the early '60's. I gave them to my cousin that still runs HO. The factory was in a nearby town.

So, I ended any thoughts of collecting HO.

Most of my HO fell under the spell of my tools and airbrush, so nothing is truly original, but here's two of my favorites:

The PFM Russian Decapod.  All time favorite.

The Bachmann Reading 2-8-0.  Picked this one up at Sears of all places, in the middle of July when I was out east for training.

The pancake motor gave out years ago, but it's such a neat locomotive.

Rusty

Here's another 70s era piece: a Life-Life work caboose with a working light....looks like something right out of a Lionel catalog.

Bob