23 replies to this topic

[strummer]

Anyone here know anything about this? (eBay posting photos...)

 

 

 

There's not a whole lot about these on the Web, other than some background history and a (very) few photos; I have some very nice Penn Line HO scale steam locomotives, so I'm assuming their slot car(s) were of high quality as well...(?)

 

Any thoughts/comments would be most appreciated. 

 

Mark in Oregon

 

 

[Paul Menkens]

Slot cars drove the Penn Line company into bankruptcy, they gave them the same lifetime warranty that they did their trains, not realizing that the motors would need some parts replaced (the brushes, for one thing) and they were soon buried under mountains of slot cars sent back under warranty.

l have a handful of Penn Line trains and they were excellent quality, one is a 2-8-2 Mikado that my friend's grandfather added a lot of brass detail parts to and it looks as good as the brass and Broadway Limited locos in the case with it. 

[Paul Menkens]

here's a link to the story of Penn Line slot cars

https://www.hoseeker...tory/wash2.html

[Dave Crevie]

That article pretty much sums it up. Penn line had an excellent line of HO scale model railroad kits. I had one of the Pacific type 4-6-2 kits that I dressed to the nines as a Southern Railway class PS-4. But when they expanded into RTR slot cars, and guaranteed them for life, that took them down. Bowser did take over the tooling, and continued selling the kits, but did not offer anything RTR, and still warranteed the motors which had been derived from the Varney line.

 

Bowser still makes some of the kits, which mostly followed Pennsylvania Railroad prototypes, the most famous being the GG-1 electric.  

 

  

[strummer]

Thanks guys

 

The "hoseeker" site (a very good one) is about the lonely place I've found anything about this line. Hopefully someone who actually has one/some will be able to chime in...

 

Their engines, when properly assembled, are (in my opinion) about as good as you can get for the "old school" type of motive power: heavy die cast and with as large an open-frame motor as will fit. I have the Pennsy K4, E6 4-4-2 and the huge 2-10-0 Decapod. All awesome engines...

[Paul Menkens]

"Bowser still makes some of the kits, which mostly followed Pennsylvania Railroad prototypes, the most famous being the GG-1 electric."  

l don't believe Bowser sells any of the kits now, they dropped that part of their line, along with their turntables, about 10 years ago, lt became impossible to compete with Broadway Limited RTRs

[Dave Crevie]

  I'm sure they don't make any of the die-cast steam locomotive kits any more. And not sure when they stopped. Too bad. They were a staple for those guys who couldn't afford brass models. I relied on Tyco, and later, Roundhouse for loco kits when I got back into HO. An invitation to John Kissinger's Northern Illinois Society of Model Engineers O-Scale layout cured me of that. Have been O-scale ever since. And never was into diesels. But Bowser was, here's the most current listing I could find;

 

 

 

(click on image to enlarge)

[Paul Menkens]

Sadly, l don't think anybody makes kit locos anymore, l still have the Tyco/Mantua Big6 my dad put together in 1962, ran great last time l used it and l have no doubt that if l put in a decoder it would run great again. The current Broadway Limited products have cut into the sales of brass, they look and perform great at a fraction of the price of brass, the miracle of Chinese manufacturing!

[ajd350]

In 1964 I was given a Penn Line from a neighbor who had given up on it. Neither cars would run, the wheels fell off of the non-knurled axles and the gear train. Still, I really like their looks and accrued several over the years, none that ran. I finally side-stepped the Penn Line platform. My solution was an extended T-Jet chassis. It works great and is a hoot with the long wheelbase.

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[Dave Crevie]

Sadly, l don't think anybody makes kit locos anymore. Probably not in HO. But in O scale there are a few cottage companies that have brought back the kits of old. One bought the tooling and rights to produce the All Nation Line from Bill Pope just before he passed. And one, Precision Scale, has been producing the Kemtron kits for quite a while. Precision also has a huge line of HO lost wax brass parts, many of which were part of HO kits. An industrious person could assemble a kit from those parts. 

 

The current Broadway Limited products have cut into the sales of brass, they look and perform great at a fraction of the price of brass, the miracle of Chinese manufacturing! 

The Broadway Limited models are good. But since the superstructures are die cast, much of the detailing is cast on. A  true "brass hat" will turn his nose up for sure. As long as there are collectors who buy brass train models for their rarity, I don't see anything else taking over that segment of the market.

 

 

 

With all that said, I have often wondered what happened to the tooling that made the parts for the mid-sixties RTR slot cars and kits. We all have heard the stories that it was all destroyed, but having been in manufacturing for so long, I know that many of those stories are false. Old tooling tends to get stored away in cargo containers and warehouses, and forgotten about. It only needs someone who knows what it is to discover it.  

[don.siegel]

Here's one of their cars in excellent condition, found some years ago on ebay - most folks have no idea what they are! I think I have one in the box somewhere. They seem well done, but have never tried them, since I don't have a track they would fit. 

 

I also have one of their little catalogs, shown here. 

 

Don 

 

 

 

 

[strummer]

Nice to see some more responses here; thanks!

 

The very fact that most posts have been about Penn Line's trains shows I think, 2 things:

 

1: There are quite a few people like me who have an interest in both trains and slot cars.

 

2: The predominance of train-related posts squares with what can be found online in general. I guess this is not surprising, given that these cars were made for only 2 (?) years or so...

 

I will post some additional pictures when the one I showed in the first post arrives here...

 

Mark in Oregon

[Dave Crevie]

I know your statement #1 to be true. At the model railroad shows, I have met a lot of guys who are at least collecting slot cars, if not actively racing somewhere. And I would have to say that many of them are collecting Model Motoring items. If someone is interested in old toys, it follows that he will want slot cars as well as trains.

[strummer]

Well lads, it arrived today. Here are a couple of pictures.

 

Next to the already over-sized (I think) Aurora Indy Racer:

 

 

 

...and along side a standard TJet:

 

 

This thing is huge! I don't have an AFX (which I think is supposed to be1/64) to compare it with.

 

It's lacking the motor and pick up shoes; I would think an N scale motor (or something similar) could be made to fit...could be an interesting project.

 

Mark in Oregon

 

 

[edscars]

Penn Line only produced the one Indy model shown. It came in white and light blue as shown above, as well as yellow, and burnt orange versions.

[Dave Crevie]

"This thing is huge! I don't have an AFX (which I think is supposed to be 1/64) to compare it with."

Mark in Oregon

 

Could it be that it is actually 1/43rd? Realizing that this was from the very early days of slot racing, I'm not sure that the manufacturers had hammered out exactly what scales they were going to push. HO and 1/43rd were great for under a Christmas tree, 1/32nd for table-top racing, and 1/24th for a larger track in a hobby or bike shop.

[don.siegel]

I believe it was listed at 1/52, like the Wrenn cars from England. 

 

Don 

[edscars]

Yes Don, I thought I'd seen them listed as 1/52 as well, but when I checked the 4 page color flyer I have like yours, I didn't notice it listed there. Maybe it's mentioned on the sets, not sure.  Here are pics of mine.  From my experience when I was collecting these in the '90s, the chassis were usually molded in white, with gray and black seen less often.

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[don.siegel]

Pretty sure I saw that in one of the articles on all the sets available in some publication. 

 

Just checked the Car Model Handbook from 1963 and in that Penn Line is listed as "slightly larger than 1/87 scale" - don't think that's too accurate in fact... 

 

Don 

[edscars]

I've never seen the packaging for the individual cars, if they did sell them individually.  The only parts for them I've seen are motors, like these marked KSS Japan.

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[don.siegel]

Great shot Ed, have never seen one of those cards. From AHM too...

 

I've got a Penn Line car in its box, a plastic box like what Aurora used for its T-jets. Unfortunately, can't find it for the moment or remember what I did with it! 

 

Don 

[don.siegel]

Found it; can't swear this is the original box, but seems possible - bought it like this on ebay with the little label some years ago. No evidence of dried up foam padding, however... 

 

Don 

 

 

 

 

 

[edscars]

Good to see even the possibility of the original packaging for Penn Line cars. Thanks for sharing.  I forgot to mention that unpackaged Penn Line motors were sold in the early '70s included in some Auto World grab bags, which they very likely acquired through liquidation.  When I got a few of those back then, I had no idea they were for Penn Line cars.since I never knew about Penn Line until the early '90s or so.  Auto World sold other liquidated items in their one dollar grab bags like factory unfinished Tyco Speedways HO bodies in the same way.  Perhaps they did the same with larger scale items as well, although I wasn't buying anything like that back then so that's just a guess.

[strummer]

Awesome stuff...thanks guys!

Mark in Oregon