Athearn - 15781 - Flatcar, 53 Foot 6 inch GSC Commonwealth - TTX Company - 90596

Model Information: MODEL FEATURES:
- Fully assembled and ready for your layout;
- TOFC version of this classic car with side rails and trailer hitch;
- Highly detailed 40' rib-side trailer load;
- Separately applied brake wheel;
- Weighted for optimal performance;
- Screw mounted trucks for accurate tracking;
- McHenry scale knuckle spring couplers installed.

Prototype History: General Steel Castings (GSC) made the underframes for the Pennsy F30. They decided to create their own product by modifying the Pennsy design. They stretched the design to 53 foot, 6 inches and made the entire body a single casting. The resulting car was manufactured starting in the early 1950s was initially sold as a kit to railroads and only late offered as a complete ready-to-run car. The car was offered in both bulkhead and non-bulkhead versions based on customer requirements.

One of the most common of all flat cars, these rugged designs were in service from the 50s to the 90s and a few still operate today. Built around a large one-piece steel casting, the prototypes could handle a wide range of cargo and were often rebuilt for piggyback loading. These cars are equally at home hauling machinery, steel slabs and more. They were also fitted with bulkheads and handled loads such as lumber and pipe, and a few roads even outfitted them with log bunks for hauling freshly cut timber.

Road Name History: TTX Company (formerly Trailer Train until 1991) is a leading provider of railcars and related freight car management services to the North American rail industry. TTX's pool of railcars (over 220,000 cars and intermodal wells) is ideal for supporting shippers in the intermodal, automotive, paper & forest, metals, machinery, wind energy and other markets where flatcars, boxcars and gondolas are required.

Owned by North America's leading railroads, TTX's free-running pools provide fungible assets that minimize total empty miles, further lowering costs and minimizing risk for the industry, helping the railroads conserve their capital for other critical infrastructure needs. Customers easily recognize TTX's bright yellow cars as a consistent, high quality, well-maintained fleet that serves many transportation needs.

Brand/Importer Information: Athearn's history began in 1938, when its founder-to-be, Irvin Athearn, started an elaborate O scale layout in his mother's house. After placing an ad selling the layout, and receiving much response to it, Irv decided that selling model railroads would be a good living. He sold train products out of his mother's house through most of the 1940s. After becoming a full-time retailer in 1946, Irv opened a separate facility in Hawthorne, California in 1948, and that same year he branched into HO scale models for the first time.

Athearn acquired the Globe Models product line and improved upon it, introducing a comprehensive array of locomotive, passenger and freight car models. Improvements included all-wheel drive and electrical contact. One innovation was the "Hi-Fi" drive mechanism, employing small rubber bands to transfer motion from the motor spindle to the axles. Another was the double-ended ring magnet motor, which permitted easy connection to all-wheel-drive assemblies. Athearn was also able to incorporate flywheels into double-ended drives.

The company produced a model of the Boston & Maine P4 class Pacific steam locomotive which incorporated a cast zinc alloy base and thermoplastic resin superstructure. It had a worm drive and all power pickup was through the bipolar trucks that carried the tender. This item was discontinued after the Wilson motor was no longer available, and was not redesigned for a more technologically advanced motor.

Athearn's car fleet included shorter-than-scale interpretations of passenger cars of Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad prototypes. The company also offered a variety of scale-length freight cars with sprung and equalized trucks. The cars could be obtained in simple kit form, or ready-to-run in windowed display boxes. The comprehensive scope of the product line contributed to the popularity of HO as a model railroad scale, due to the ready availability of items and their low cost.

Irv Athearn died in 1991. New owners took control in 1994, but continued to follow Athearn's commitment to high-quality products at reasonable prices. Athearn was bought in 2004 by Horizon Hobby. Athearn was then moved from its facility in Compton to a new facility in Carson, California. In mid-2009, all remaining US production was moved to China and warehousing moved to parent Horizon Hobby. Sales and product development was relocated to a smaller facility in Long Beach, California.

Read more on Wikipedia and Athearn website.