I have a goodly number of highly detailed cars like intermountain, atlas, and tangent. But there’s something about these Athearn blue box kit cars that I really love. When you see them, you know you’re looking at a model, and not the highest quality one possible, but you’re looking at the golden age of Model Railroad 60 years ago. The days of Mantua, Varney, Silver Streak, Ulrich, Perma-Scene, Model Die Casting, Ambroid, the Walthers of old heavyweight passenger car kits…. And the brass steam engines that no one could afford. What fun we had back then. Even with brass rail, lumps of zinc somewhat resembling steam engines that would not go slower than that 15 scale miles per hour, and so on. The smell of Walthers Goo and Floquil paint meant “Warning! Extreme fun in area!” But. Not to denigrate today with all the great stuff we have in the present.
