1920’S BING O GAUGE
1911 CARETTE COACH 1906 CARETTE CLOCKWORK SET AND STATION
Bing’s 1912 jobbers Hauptcatalog for Compagnie Internationale des Wag- ons-Lits (CIWL). Strikingly handsome with wood grain lithography, they were marked Schlafwagen (sleeper) and Gepack-Express-Post (Baggage-mail car). They measured 13⁷/₈″ in O and In Gauge I, 19³/₄″. Bing cataloged them with a scale Gauge I Bavarian Pacific, eight-wheel tender and three cars in an impressive six foot set. A smaller CIWL Schlafwagen better reveals how Bing would lithograph and then press dimensional details on car sides, a so- phistication U.S. companies were less prone to use, preferring that they re- main flat.
On a more prosaic level, we see a simple four-wheel Pennsylvania bag- gage car. Bing entered the U.S. market big time when Sears, Roebuck & Co. began cataloging it in 1912. It made a range of American prototype passenger cars in O and Gauge I. Among these were lithographed New York Central and Pennsylvania Lines, as this sam- ple with baggage cars, coaches and open end observation cars; Gauge I cars were uniformly eight wheel, as were some in O. Four- and eight-wheel, freight cars came with faithfully copied American liveries, particularly popular beer reefers until post-war Prohibition required all beer brands be blacked
1905-1911 SMALL CARETTE COACH
out. Bing produced 125 different tin printed cars for the American market in O, I and Standard gauges. Geo. Carette et Cie, was a German manufacturer with a French owner be- cause Nuremberg was where the best trains were made, and Carette made some of the finest. In business since 1886, World War I saw an end to it and Carette returned to France in 1914, some of his equipment and dies going to British Bassett-Lowke. The small, playful 1905 blue and gold O gauge coach is typical of those found in low end sets with no pretense to be any- thing more than a toy. The larger, col- orful green Gauge I coach, circa 1911, possibly earlier, appeared in mid-size, mid-priced sets.
It’s generic with no
lettering to identify it for German, French or English markets and it is very much a toy.
Store, 1906, cataloged Carette’s simple, beautifully-printed clockwork,
Gamages of London Department four-
wheel locomotive and coaches in British L&NWR livery with points and Neville Junction station.
Carette also produced full scale lith- ographed model passenger cars. The Gauge I, LMS dining car dates from 1935. Made by Bassett-Lowke from
1920’S-1930’S FANDOR O GAUGE
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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