Frank's Roundhouse KMT

I had the TOFC cars for the PRR but I sold them off a couple of decades ago.

Here are some of mine,

Here are a few more

Hi Ross

That looks like a nice layout behind your GN car. Lets see some pics.

Harold

Here are a couple more. 

IIRC, Frank’s were approx. the size of Williams boxcars, right? I had a 6 car set of NY Central PCMs, all diff. numbers, that I ran behind a Lionel 8477 GP9. Good lookin’ train.

My only Frank's boxcar.

HSD62,  You asked about passenger cars — here you go.  I purchased these from a place called Ellie’s Lokies I believe in the late 90s.  They were not cheap as the paint job, including the gold lettering is really super.  All the lettering is crisp and the same for the horizontal gold pinstripes along the side.  The Cornell Red is deep and rich.  I really don’t know who did the custom paint work for Frank’s Roundhouse.   Note the pictures below has a scale Pennsylvania car next to it to give a comparison of size.  These have been boxed up and stored for several years and have had little run time.  I’m actually thinking of selling them as I have a Weaver/MTH John Wilkes set for my Lehigh Valley passenger service.  If anyone is interested, send me an email with a reasonable offer.  Otherwise, enjoy the photos…..

Here are two of Frank's perhaps lesser known boxcars.  I met Franks when I was a junior in high school. He showed me the largest number of boxed 6464 boxcars I've ever seen.  He offered to sell me a boxed OO gauge set for $100.00.  I was a junior in high school and it may as well have been a million.  He was an extremely nice guy.

I visited Frank Rash’s “Frank’s Roundhouse” train shop all the time when I was growing up.  I used to watch Frank’s son, Jack, assemble all these awesome cars in the shop.  

The boxcars would arrive to them with the painted/lettered shells separate from the stamped metal floors.  I can’t remember if the doors and door guides were also separate pieces that needed to be installed, or if they were already attached to the body shell.  There would be cases upon cases of decorated bodies, and boxes and boxes of steel floors.  The trucks were also separate—if my memory serves me correctly.  

Jack had to install the trucks on the floors, then attach the shells to the floors.  Then he put the finished cars in those classic stamped, white boxes.  He had quite the process down and was able to turn them out pretty quickly!

I remember thinking how they looked so much bigger and better than the equivalent Lionel boxcars of that period.  I suppose it’s no surprise that a few years later—when I had a job and some disposable income—I bought a LOT of these great cars!

This thread has taken me down memory lane!

Here's my "collection." I remember buying tons of these back in the 90s from him at York and loving how nice they looked and how well they ran. (Yes, the 9770 box in the bottom right corner is not one of these.) They're still favorites of mine!

Here are a few more of my Frank’s Roundhouse.

UP TOFC in my intermodal yard.

Lackawanna passenger set

D&H passenger set

Don't forget the Custom Trains FMs made by Frank's Roundhouse. Well decorated and great pullers. FRH decorated 22 different Trainmasters. I have a PRR FM upgraded to TMCC by GRJ and love to run it with a set of the FRH PRR Madison cars.

For a good overview of the FRH production (boxcars, TOFCs, passenger cars, Trainmaster FMs, and F3s), check out http://www.robertstrains.com/Frank.htm

I've never seen the FRH GG1s mention by the OP but would love to see them. Please post pics if you have them.

Bob

I, too, became instantly enamored of those (and earlier AMT/KMT/Kusan) boxcars because of the many different road names and shades of boxcar red that they were offered in, and that they were slightly more to scale than the 6464 series.

To identify them from a distance at meets (remember them?) just look for the triangular shape along the bottom edge of the plastic shells. That represents, probably, in real life some sort of gusset that ties the body to the frame, but it makes a quick method of identifying them on a shelf or in a box under the table of a dealer.  Also, take a look at the roof walkway on most of them. That detail has a molding error that carries over onto most of all of the box cars. Right near the end, in the tiny spaces that represent the walkway grating, a few of the spaces have become filled in.

Mark said: "IIRC, Frank’s were approx. the size of Williams boxcars, right? I had a 6 car set of NY Central PCMs, all diff. numbers, that I ran behind a Lionel 8477 GP9. Good lookin’ train."

"Good lookin' train"...absolutely. Their slightly larger size works visually with the 5' gauge track that we use.

Actually, to be more correct, Williams boxcars are the size of Franks. Frank's came before Jerry's. Williams, it seems, bought the tooling. Somebody else (Kader?) has them now.

HSD: That's a very nice collection of B&O cars. One of my grandfathers worked for the B&O. He gave me the Lionel 6468 blue automobile car for one of my early birthdays. The brown/red ones are the ones that we all saw in real life as kids. Finding a brown 6468 for a reasonable price (under $150.00) is difficult. I've been trying for a few decades.

Jack Rash is a good friend and lives nearby. He is the hall captain in the Orange Hall at York. His booth is on the back row across from the entrance to the loading dock where Trainworld sets up. If you are at York, and have questions, you can stop by and chat with him.