Glen Uhl 9160 Illinois Central Caboose

charger posted:

go to Ambrose/Bauer auction site 11 Apr auction #489.  this may help.

Interesting...I definitely see some similarities between one of those and the one we got.....

There is still some debate whether these were actually made for Glen Uhl or not. The only cars Glen had made were the Timken 6464 Boxcars. Another was a black and red 6414 Auto Loader with yellow lettering on the black structure. I have one of these so called Glen Uhl Cabooses, but it was never confirmed, he focused more on postwar items for his store, basically, whatever was left over from Postwar Lionel Corp in the 70's.

As someone with a strong interest in early MPC, as well as personally having a history with Glen's Train Shop in Akron, let me throw some thoughts your way.

Your observations are spot-on... the white top was applied after the black "IC" circle was stamped. Most of the cars show signs of orange paint peeking around the circle's perimeter, indicating a crude masking job that almost assuredly was not done in a Lionel factory. You'll also occasionally see one of these with some faint white overspray on top of the black circle. In addition, I've seen at least two different finishes to the white top.

Besides not likely being produced by Lionel, I also can't find any proof of the attribution to Glen's. In the mid-1990's, I had the opportunity to purchase tons -- literally -- of paperwork from Glen's going back to the 1950's. Among those items were things like factory invoices, proofs of Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman ads that he would run, the actual typewritten price lists he would circulate, etc. Scattered in there were mentions of things like his 1971 run of 6464-500 Timken boxcars and the blue 6446-25 Norfolk & Western Hopper. But to this day, I've never seen anything solid that would indicate Glen's sold those cabooses. I'm not saying that he didn't, but I would have thought that some kind of evidence would have been located by now -- especially since I've purposely gone looking.

As for the TCA Indentag label on the box, one guess is that someone had it for sale at a TCA meet and a TCA Standards Committee member in attendance couldn't vouch for its authenticity. I don't believe any "reproductions" of these cars were made, but given the likelihood that even the "originals" were made outside the factory, I suppose anything is possible.

So is the white-top 9160 an interesting piece? Yes.

Collectable curio for the early MPC collector? I think so.

Made entirely by Lionel? Doubtful.

Sold by Glen's in Akron? I dunno.

I hope this helps.

TRW

The interesting thing I see on this caboose is the roller collector. The first MPC 9160 run had postwar AAR trucks with postwar sintered iron wheelsets & axles, and the typical postwar 581-10 roller collector bottom plate made for the AAR truck. The AAR tooling was modified after that to work with the fast-angle wheelsets(and "thumbtack" coupler releases - The AAR usually has a steel bar instead of an actual round head tack), and then the S-W trucks this caboose has were used. BUT, the 9050-150 roller collector bottom plate was used on the AAR & S-W trucks, the hollow roller setup on this caboose must have been very short-lived.

PaperTRW posted:

As someone with a strong interest in early MPC, as well as personally having a history with Glen's Train Shop in Akron, let me throw some thoughts your way.

Your observations are spot-on... the white top was applied after the black "IC" circle was stamped. Most of the cars show signs of orange paint peeking around the circle's perimeter, indicating a crude masking job that almost assuredly was not done in a Lionel factory. You'll also occasionally see one of these with some faint white overspray on top of the black circle. In addition, I've seen at least two different finishes to the white top.

Besides not likely being produced by Lionel, I also can't find any proof of the attribution to Glen's. In the mid-1990's, I had the opportunity to purchase tons -- literally -- of paperwork from Glen's going back to the 1950's. Among those items were things like factory invoices, proofs of Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman ads that he would run, the actual typewritten price lists he would circulate, etc. Scattered in there were mentions of things like his 1971 run of 6464-400 Timken boxcars and the blue 6446-25 Norfolk & Western Hopper. But to this day, I've never seen anything solid that would indicate Glen's sold those cabooses. I'm not saying that he didn't, but I would have thought that some kind of evidence would have been located by now -- especially since I've purposely gone looking.

As for the TCA Indentag label on the box, one guess is that someone had it for sale at a TCA meet and a TCA Standards Committee member in attendance couldn't vouch for its authenticity. I don't believe any "reproductions" of these cars were made, but given the likelihood that even the "originals" were made outside the factory, I suppose anything is possible.

So is the white-top 9160 an interesting piece? Yes.

Collectable curio for the early MPC collector? I think so.

Made entirely by Lionel? Doubtful.

Sold by Glen's in Akron? I dunno.

I hope this helps.

TRW

Awesome response TRW! Thank you for the info!!