Red Caboose

The red caboose o scale line was sold to.Atlas O scale over a decade ago.

Both Red Caboose and Intermountain as private companies left the O Scale market over ten years ago. O  Scale kits are available on EBay, more Intermountain then Red Caboose. 

Over the weekend I saw some Red Caboose reefers at a train show, and they looked pretty good.  Not knowing anything about Red Caboose, and as the reefers were nice, but the decoration not of a subject of my interests, I passed on them.  Later in the day I got to see one of their PFE reefers up close on a friend's layout, and I got curious enough to do some searches, but didn't find out much about their O gauge offerings.  I am now quite curious as to their O gauge offerings and history (with regards to O gauge).

Did they issue catalogs?  Or would I have to comb through old magazine ads to figure out what they made that I might be interested in hunting?

Andy

As I recall they made a reefer based on a PFEX car, a flat car, a tank car and a GP7 in O.   They did do some RTR cars but mostly kits.  I picked up a couple of RTR reefers they painted up as FGEX for an O scale convention.

The only issue i have with the Red Caboose kits are there is A LOT of FRAGILE detailed parts made from thin plastic and are easily broken - especially when "using the 5 finger crane"! When Atlas O bought out their molds, many of those small parts were now made out of metal.

I don't know for sure, but I think Intermountain may have done the tooling for Red Caboose.    I think that Intermountain did, or had done their own tooling.

As far as I know Red Caboose did the cars mentioned above.     I did not know that their stuff went into Atlas O.   I did know that Intermountain O scale went into Atlas O.   

One note if  you buy these kits, the truck width and required axle length is shorter on Red Caboose cars than Intermountain.   Intermountain uses the same length axle as Athearn and Weaver.      The metal Intermountain wheelsets drop right into their cars.   for Red Caboose if you want to replace the wheelsets you have get something from NWSL that fits.

These kits are not difficult to build but they are tedious.    As mentoned, there are a lot of fragile small parts.   It takes a little patience and time to get everything installed on the body.     They are not "shake the box" but they are not craftsman style either.

They also made a locomotive for the O Scale / 3 Rail market.  A GP7 / 9 - Very nice model.  Fixed pilots?  LOTS of fragile parts.  I think they used a horizontal drive system - One motor - dual drive shafts.  The weak point was the drive tower to the trucks.  Plastic gears - broke or would slip.  Believe P&D hobby made a replacement drive tower.  Also the 3 rail knuckle coupler stuck out at least  a inch and a half from the front the pilot.  Show up on the bay now and then. No traction tires - engine was light - more then a couple of cars and it would slip badly.