K-Line WP Alco product number

K-2106 is the number! 

The K-Line Legacy site doesn't cover the early years of products, and your K-Line Alco is an early production loco. I don't have my K-Line catalogs anymore, but the K-2106 WP Alco you just bought was originally from a train set from 1988 or 1989.

There were quite a few single Alco unit train sets: Southern, Western Pacific, Pennsylvania come to my mind as I had those three. I still have the engines, though they've all been repainted and I couldn't tell you which was which.

Those early K-Line products were also USA made/assembled at Chapel Hill, N.C. Though the DC can motors and circuit boards were certainly made over seas. If I remember correctly, K-Line moved total production overseas very late 1989-early 1990.

It is not impossible that Western Pacific Alco could have come in a A-A package. I know the early PRR Alco came with a dummy unit. It is also likely that those early Alcos came with operating couplers. These would have come in the early blue and white boxes with an early K-Line logo on it. The black engine boxes came later after the move overseas.

Usually the dummy unit has a road number one or two digits off from the powered unit. Like the Erie twin Alco units are numbered 2129 and 2131. The Erie Alcos were also produced in China and have the non-operating dummy couplers between both locomotives.

Maybe someone else will chime in with more specific info... someone with some older K-Line catalogs or the K-Line product reference book.

Here is the information requested.

Thanks to all for the info.

Ahitpy, good historical info you posted there. Is that a scan from a document you have or is it on-line?

I have many K-Line items that have a "K" in front of the road number to make up the product number. Some of them don't and have a number that is different from the road number, so I didn't want to assume I could add a "K" and get it right.

Mike, the scan provided by Ahitpy is from the K-Line Product Reference Book that I mentioned. The book was written and published by K-Line and can be found on the usual internet auction sites.

Most K-Line products have a product number that will also be the same number on the train car or engine, save for the letter. Even when they went to the 3 digit suffix number system, there was still a letter K starting the number. Like K742-xxxx would be for a scale sized reefer, whereas K642-xxxx would be for a traditionally sized reefer. 

Though as with other train companies, it is not always definite, trying to figure out product scale proportions from the item number.

I have a complete set of K-Line catalogs, near complete set of K-Line Connections newsletters, many sale flyers, price lists, instruction pages, the books offered by MDK as well as publicly available copies of court documents related to the K-Line trademark, logo and legal proceedings.  Also, I have a pictorial guide of the Marx accessories prior to K-Line taking possession of the molds.

I have made K-Line my hobby....collecting, operating, repairing, documenting and unauthorized historian.

bianelO27 is a great resource and friend in the K-Line world.

Ahitpy, brianel, thanks for your efforts in keeping the old K-Line info available and for sharing. I really liked K-Line and was sorry to see them go away. I just recently got back into buying semi-scale again. I started with the K-Line PRR Alco set like the one I had when I was a teenager. I sold my O gauge stuff back in the early nineties and got into N scale. When I got back into O gauge I went for scale sized stuff only. I missed my old K-Line semi-scale stuff and always regretted selling it. I have plenty now, so all is well. Thanks again.