Greenberg's Train and Toy Show is coming up. So some weeks ago I started planning which modules and which (beer cans? Box cars?) and how many cars (100?) I would bring. I was discussing this with my daughter (she sometimes helps with scenery painting, which is a life saver since I am red/green colorblind) when she asked me how I got interested in trains. This made me think of the Atlas box car, gondola and helium trains I received as a young boy. I showed these trains to my daughter. But she got me thinking. Over the past 20 years, I have been collecting (total tally is currently 800) model trains (mostly Northeast, post war) and, I spend a fair amount of time exhibiting at regional train shows. But what did I know about these cars and the company who made them and impacted my life? I wound up digging around for information on n-scale and Atlas and found a great resource, Introduction to A1G, the Atlas "1st Generation" by George Irwin of Irwins Journal.com*. Here’s a snippet of some of what I learned. N-scale is a ‘young’ gauge and was born in the 1960s (unlike HO and O, which go back over 100 years). The early 1960-63 n-scale releases from Arnold (Germany) were popular in the U.S. but expensive and hard to find. So, in the mid-1960s, Atlas Tool produced an excellent variety of high-quality (for the time period), low-cost offerings, (featured in the 1967-1968 Atlas catalog) which built upon what Arnold started and made it available to more consumers. So, by making model train cars available to the masses, Atlas (by default made up the core of many a train enthusiasts collection) impacted my life and that of generations of countless n-scale collectors. Given this, I decided to add the Atlas 1st Generation Rolling Stock series to the online train database I maintain on TroveStar, a collector’s website. You can find complete lists of the 1967 (75 items including major variations) and 1969 (102 items including major variations) Atlas Rolling Stock Catalogs on TroveStar. I’ve shared these listings with my daughter and she said, “Geez, Dad, I had no idea my question would lead to all of this work.” Neither did I but I’m glad it did. *Irwins Journal.com is well known for the UMTRR (Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report), which reviews and researches every MTL release; his efforts over the last 15 years have been nothing short of Herculean. How fortunate for me and TroveStar that George applied his excellent researching skills and narrative to the Atlas Rolling Stock series. Thank you George!
