Athearn
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Athearn was founded in the 1930s by Irvin 'Uncle Irving' Athearn, manufacturing 'O' scale freight cars in the Los Angeles (California) metropolitan area. During the 1940s Athearn branched into the expanding 'HO' scale market with wood and metal kits, and then in the 1950s entered the plastic model train market with it's famous 'F7' locomotive.
The popularity of these 'F-unit' eventually led to the renown 'Blue Box' series of 'HO' scale kits (easy to assemble plastic kits, packaged in blue boxes), offered from the 1950s and still available today (periodically new releases were added to the line, such as the 1980s introduction of EMD locomotives models like the SW1500 and GP38-2). These 'Blue Box' kits were usually sold at very reasonable prices, and consequently often comprised the majority of newbie (and not so newbie) model railroaders' locos and rolling stock. In addition, the 'Blue Box' kits formed the basis for multitudes of published kit-bashing projects (which described how to create models of unique or otherwise unavailable locomotives and rolling stock).
In recent years the 'Blue Box' series has been eclipsed by Athearn's pre-assembled 'Ready-To-Roll'© series of model locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, and motor vehicles - these fully assembled models usually feature finer detailing and better paint jobs than the blue-box kits, and also follow the current trend in model railroading of 'pre-assembled' models.
Athearn was purchase by Horizon Hobbies in 2004, and consequently has absorbed most of the Model Die Casting (MDC) line of 'post-war' locomotives and freight cars; Athearn has also recently begun releasing a series of 'N' scale models, often based on 'HO' model product lines.
External link
- Company web site (http://www.athearn.com/)
- MRIA Hall Of Fame Biographies (http://www.mria.org/Bios.htm)
