Walthers Catalogs...

I have several and they are interesting and informative. I don’t recall the dates on mine.

@Brother_Love posted:

I have several and they are interesting and informative. I don’t recall the dates on mine.

The reason I bought this was because in the Wills book "American O Scale" he mentions the decline of the scale in general and the Walthers catalog in particular. I was actually expecting a much smaller publication, but this 1973 edition was fine. 🙂

Mark in Oregon

Because you like cabeese. 😁

The Wills book though enjoyable is filled with numerous errors.  His comments about Scale-Craft, Lobaugh and Walthers are not to be taken as gospel.

Walther's catalogs are a wealth of information ...starting in 1934 ......Walthers made or sold a huge number of items ..,many of which are quite hard to find .

Here are a grouping of Walthers engines ..

City of Portland 1935

Bottom,Mikado 1937-39

Box cab 1938-40's

Northern , 060, top Mike all Polydrive 1941-2

Swither war baby

Cheers Carey

Thanks Carey; I was hoping you would see this post and be willing to chime in. 🙂

Mark in Oregon

The Walthers catalogs have been most valuable to the HO and N crowds, for obvious reasons.  At the peak of Walthers publications they had 3 separate catalogs for HO, Large Scale/O/S, and N/Z.  Large scale/O catalogs were the first to cease publication.  More recently, N/Z were folded in with the HO catalog.

Now comes the news that even their HO/N/Z catalog will only be published bi-annually, the next edition in 2024.

I 'spect that's not the end of the story, either.  Hard copy catalogs of the  Walthers type/quality are becoming very expensive, not only to assemble and publish, but also for manufacturers to buy into advertisements therein.  That, plus very fluid, rapidly changing product listings, delayed/cancelled product schedules, business closures/sales, inflationary pressures (price changes), etc., etc., puts paper catalogs...especially bi-annual ones...in a difficult forecast of relevance.  As is true for so many manufacturers' advertising nowadays, on-line catalogs are more easily kept up-to-date, often lower in costs, better in the customer service/satisfaction category.

Enjoy them while they're available, I suppose. 

Change.  One of the certainties of the hobby as well as life in general.

KD

@j2morris posted:

The Wills book though enjoyable is filled with numerous errors.  His comments about Scale-Craft, Lobaugh and Walthers are not to be taken as gospel.

Yeah, that's been mentioned here before.

But until someone (maybe somebody here) can do a "proper" job, it's still the best thing we have so far on the subject.

Gee, after several, several years in the works, a momentous and rather grand history of the slot car was published a year or so ago: one would think there would be interest in a similar book on early 17/64"/1:48... perhaps not.

Happy we have sites like this. 🙂

Mark in Oregon

I'm not sure if this link will work for you, but I had written up information (with photos wherever possible) about freight, passenger and locomotive kits produced by General Models / All Nation, Walthers, Kasiner and American Standard heavyweight and light weight passenger cars on this O Scale Kings website.  Some titles might be a little confusing as it this was done piecemeal for internet transfer via e-mail attachments. More information has been found since these were done, but to include them will require a full re-write of affected sections and re-submission for posting.

https://oscalekings.org/WP/reference-area/

Drop down the Reference section bar and Explore!

S. Islander

Thanks.

I saw that just the other day, but I guess since I'm currently limited to my phone, I can't access that information.

Another reason to look forward to recovering from this back issue! 🙂

Mark in Oregon

@dkdkrd posted:

... on-line catalogs are more easily kept up-to-date, often lower in costs, better in the customer service/satisfaction category.

Enjoy them while they're available, I suppose.

KD

I've always enjoyed sitting my easy chair with the big Walthers catalog, and a favorite beverage. I do the same with OGR and MRR magazines, that I buy from the train shop.

I hate change. lol

Jim

I'm slowly collecting the Walthers Catalogs by year, Carey's right in that some of the earlier ones are quite hard to find.

As an aside, the Box Car Ken catalogs from the late fifties and early sixties are quite informative too often listing more diverse manufacturers products, kits etc. than the contemporary Walthers catalog for that year.

Mark, try and locate a prewar, I see the 1941 listed often and you can usually find a 1946-49 pretty easily,  good reference to the early stuff to go with the later catalogs.  Will help follow the kit number changes over the years as well.  I also have a 54 that is a pretty good one as it still has the GG1 and some of the diesels.  The prewar ones will have the steamers

@atlpete posted:

I'm slowly collecting the Walthers Catalogs by year, Carey's right in that some of the earlier ones are quite hard to find.

As an aside, the Box Car Ken catalogs from the late fifties and early sixties are quite informative too often listing more diverse manufacturers products, kits etc. than the contemporary Walthers catalog for that year.

I second te Boxcar Ken, I have one and there is a ton of stuff in there.