Pre-Athearn Globe by Keith Wills G


lobe was a post-World War II manufacturer of quality HO car models with a two-part history, the first on its own and the second as a line manufactured by Athearn. We will examine its early days. Globe was founded and incorporated


screened aluminum stampings repre- senting aluminum prototypes printed for different roads. There were 19 liver- ies, and one yellow Union Pacific stock car, with others painted Boxcar Red having five blank letterboards and 15 numbers for use on other roads.


the catalog stressing no cardboard sides, common on other brands. Sides were screened with different numbers so a modeler could have several cars for


ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE 1949 CATALOG


In their ads, Globe was not afraid to show modelers the impressive details (above and right) that they put into each rolling stock kit.


by Frank Taylor and Carl Traub in 1943. Taylor had developed a sand castings and sheet brass Milwaukee Road 4-6-4 Baltic class F6 HO locomo- tive in 1937 under his company name, Taylor Made Models. Later, both he and it went to Walthers where he be- came the company’s chief designer; the F6 continued in manufacture there. Later still, he moved on to become an editor at Model Railroader. Taylor and Traub introduced their first cars in 1948, determined they would look good, have fidelity of detail and operate well. There were boxcars, automobile cars, reefers and stock cars in the line. A circa 1949 second edition catalog describes the cars. Construction was simple, requiring a small screwdriver, pliers and hammer to assemble them. Cars consisted of wood floors, ends and, initially, un- painted wood roofs. Painted, stamped- metal silk screened sides with sliding doors, painted stamped ends and, later, painted metal roofs completed them. The only unpainted cars were silk


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Note the ladders and the grab irons on these cars; the metal sides were attached to the wood floor with bent tabs and pins.


Sides were tabbed and bent under, to be pinned beneath to the wood floor. The underbody had simple stamped sills with a cast AB brake valve, brake cylin- der, reservoir and brake cylinder pipe with connections between them left to the modeler to fabricate from wire, not included in the kits, following a diagram in the catalog. Roof walks were cast, as were insulated bolsters which circum- vented the many electrical shorts suf- fered in those days. The coupler pockets were designed to accommodate then- current couplers, Devore, Mantua and dummy. Smaller details, such as lad- ders, were cast or stamped; grab irons were staples, common to all scales then. Dummy knuckle couplers and sprung Athearn Bettendorf trucks were includ- ed in the first kits but later replaced with a rigid frame type as Athearn de- liveries proved unreliable. The only use of plastic were Tenite II stock car sides which tended to warp, as did those on Varney’ s of the same period. Construction was similar to several metal clad lines on the market, with


the same road without identical road numbers. Compared to today’s sophisti- cated,


highly-detailed plastic freight cars with good underbody details, Globe cars come across rather well for the era. Although a bit bare of what we expect today, they could presumably be su- perdetailed to bring them up to modern


FEBRUARY 2014


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