Source for American Flyer/Ives catalogs?

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

John Clifford,

 

I was just about to respond with this same information. I own John Holtmann's Lionel archive and it is an excellent source of reference.

 

John Holtmann,

 

Do you have any plans to produce an IVES archive and will you be at the York train meet?

 

Eric Hofberg

TCA, LCCA

You may also want to join the Ives Train Society  http://www.ivestrains.org/

Good info there and I believe Dave McEntarfer has done a CD of Ives catalogs.

Also John's CD for Flyer is a must have.

Steve

i couldn't find this information on the web site, but i am wondering how the catalogs are formatted.  are consecutive pages (with spanned images) concatenated?  or are only individual pages viewable?  what is the format of the page images and what is the maximum resolution?  to answer some questions on this forum, i sometimes crop pieces off my scanned catalog images to use as examples.  is this possible with these digital catalogs?  or are the only images accessible through screen capture?  that is, are the raw images available to use (eg: Save image as...)?

 

there are repro American Flyer catalogs.  i was missing 1932 and managed to pick up the repro for a pretty reasonable price.

 

thanks...gary

Hi Eric,

 

Thank you for the kind words.

 

Yes, I will be at York in the Orange Hall next to my friends from OGR and across from Ross Custom Switches.  I will have all products available.  I will also be able to demonstrate all products to anyone interested.

 

Regarding an Ives catalog archive, I would find that very interesting and I have been accumulating some catalogs in case I would pursue that project.  Unfortunately, I do not have access to most of the early 1900 - 1920 catalogs that would probably be of most interest to folks.  I am also unsure of the interest level in an Ives catalog archive.  However ... I do take note when someone asks!

 

Thanks Eric.

 

 

Hi John

I have John Holtmann's Digital Archive CD's for the Lionel pre war 1900-1942 (two CD's) as well as the American Flyer 1907-1937 catalog CD and there is no finer source of information available anywhere else. All the catalogs are there and you can enlarge the pages and see and read all the details. It is a treasure trove of information. Get these you will not be disappointed.

   

I too would love to see John Holtmann produce a CD with all the Ives catalogs.

 

Enjoy

 

Frank

Hi Gary,

 

Each page is scanned individually but much effort was expended to make sure the pages line up as you scroll across the page from left to right.  I do have a couple of sample images on the web-site:

 

http://www.hslinc.com/dahome/dasample.html

 

The pages are saved as JPEGs at 100 DPI which provides plenty of resolution for online viewing and casual prints.  A snippet or two could be taken from the images for reference but, as you can imagine, full blown replication would not be acceptable.   

 

Please let me know if I can provide any additional information.

 

 

John, are your CDs Apple computer compatible?

Thanks,
John.

 

Hi John,

 

Yes, the CDs will work on both Windows-based and Apple/Mac operating systems.  

 

 

 

Thanks Frank for your kind words and continued support!  I hear at least a few votes for an Ives offering!

  

Thanks John, just ordered 3 of your digital archives.  If all goes well, I'll be ordering more in the future.  I also would like to see an Ives digital archive, like others here have mentioned.  Maybe you could do another CD including the likes of Dorfan, Boucher, Voltamp, etc. and since the volume of material would be much less than the other big manufacturers they could be put on a single CD.

 

 

Thanks again,

John. 

John, I went back to your website and noticed the products for Ipad and the like, great idea, I'll probably be adding these to my collection as well since I'm an avid Ipad user.

 

 

Thanks again,

John.

John,

 

Thank you very much.  Your order will ship today and you should have it by Wednesday.  Please let me know if you have any problems or questions with these products.

 

I agree that including Dorfan and some of the others would be nice.  As much as anything, it is a matter of having access to the material.  Most of these products were developed with the assistance of others (Bill Schmeelk, Bob Osterhoff, etc.).  The material for the American Flyer volume is compliments of Andy Jugle, a fellow AF enthusiast from your area.

 

Thanks again.

 

John,

 

Regarding the possibility of doing an IVES CD, I'm reasonably sure that members of the IVES Train Society (meeting in the orange hall on Friday) and the TCA library might be good resources. I have a fair number of original Ives catalogs that you are welcome to access for this project.

 

Eric Hofberg

TCA, LCCA

 

 

 

100 dpi is ok for screen resolution, but for printing i prefer 300dpi+.  you have to admit, some of the old graphics (with a little manipulation) should be hung on a wall rather than closed up in a catalog page and sitting on a shelf.

 

by the way, now at home, i checked the 1932 Flyer repro catalog and it is indeed a Greenberg (1975) reprint.

 

cheers...gary

I am surprised that nobody mentioned the free material provided by RFG. He has scans of around 78 different American Flyer catalogs available on his site:

 

http://www.rfgco.com/americanf...catalogs/index1.html

unfortunately that site is almost entirely Gilbert (ie: post-1937) Flyer.  i just picked up 1927-1941 catalogs that i'm in the process of scanning.  luckily catalogs in this era averaged 40-50 pages, not like the current, multi-volume monsters.

Hello John -

 

Has there been any new development in the tablet versions of your great product?  I'm looking to fill the last remaining space on my iPad!  See you in a few weeks at York.

 

 

I just wanted to follow up on my original post.  I placed my order with John's company HSL on Monday and received the items on Wednesday, very impressed with the fast shipping.  As far as quality is concerned, I couldn't be happier, the picture quality if first rate.  This actually surprised me because I have several Greenberg's Lionel Catalogs books (volumes 2, 3 and 4) and some of their pictures are very blurry so I feared I'd get the same from HSL.  This was not the case, in fact I compared the books to the images on the computer screen and the HSL product has very clear pictures.  I highly recommend the HSL products, they are very high quality at a reasonable price.

 

 

John.

I am very curious about the digital AF version I will definitely check it out in the orange hall. Sounds like a great resource.

I use it every day or nearly so.  John is a super guy and a good friend... Check out the Lionel pieces too,  just as valuable a resource......