"Zimmer Scale Models"...?

Produced by Zimmer, sold by All Nation. Apparently good kits.

I have hearad of Zimmer kits, but I don't know anything about them.   I am going to guess 40s-50s era.   

The All Nation hobby shop existed before the All Nation kit supplier came about.    I think someone from the hobby shop with permission used the name or the shop itself bought the General Models kit line and then expanded it.

So as a guess this dates to before All Nation made kits and the All Nation Hobby Shop was selling Zimmer Kits and maybe had them contracted hence the name on the instructions.   This is just  a SWAG

@bob2 posted:

Produced by Zimmer, sold by All Nation. Apparently good kits.

An additional photo on the eBay listing shows the box end: "Distributed by All Nation Hobby Shop".

I'm certainly no expert (no kidding!)  , but a photo of the underside of the car looks the same as (most) Athearn cars I have: with the two piece "cross braces" and the threaded (I'm guessing ) brass insert for the truck screw...

As usual with these older O "gauge" cars, a lot of how it looks now depends on how it was assembled in the first place; in this case, very well, I'd say.

Note to self: add "Zimmer" to the list...

Mark in Oregon

Here is a Zimmer kit, number 7520, I built in 1976. It is a 50', 50 ton, steel framed, 12' double-door, double-sheathed box car that models those built by the Mount Vernon Car Corp. for the D&RGW in the late1920's- early 1930's.  Most of it is milled wood with metal ends and seam caps (roof ribs). I added interior sheathing and flooring detail to show planking and the inside wall reporting marks. Also, a fully detailed underbody with brake piping and rigging.  All parts were very accurately made. The pre-painted, silk screened sides sides were slightly longer than the car body, so they could be trimmed to an exact fit.  All Zimmer kits had definite prototypes which they modeled. When introduced, they were not the usual 'generic' car kits commonly available in the late 1940's and onward.   S. Islander

Gorgeous job on the D&RGW

Many thanks!  I almost forgot. I do have another Zimmer I built.  It was a Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo 40' double sheathed box car. I bout the kit at All Nation in Chicago in 1966,  not long after there was a fire in the building next door. AN had a fire sale of kits and all that had smoke, heat or water damage. The car roof for this  kit  was  two milled wood strips you cement together along the center line.  Both were warped slightly in opposite directions, so they sold it to me for $4.00 instead of the $8.00 they were asking.  When I got to build it, I clamped both wood strips with blocks to straighten them and let them sit for two months. I glued them together with a good quality waterproof wood glue. They haven't budged since.   It was a TH&B for a few years, then I repainted and re-lettered it for Northwestern Pacific, after taking a long Budd car ride from Fort Bragg to Willets and spying an NWP car just like it on a siding along the way.  A decade passed and some cracks began to show in the siding. So, back the bench it went for new sides. It "rolled out of the shop" as a single sheathed Jersey Central box car wearing the number of one like it that was in the 'Pickle Works' wreck on the Long Island RR in the1950's. Here's what it looks like now. Zimmer kit number 7440, modified.  Like the D&RGW, it also has a detailed interior and underbody. Doing that takes time and keeps me from accumulating too huge a pile of O scale cars!                                                       S. Islander

I have had....may still...kits in boxes lettered for Zimmer...too lazy to go look, but l think one or more was D&RGW, as that is what l would pick up.....

@bob2 posted:

Produced by Zimmer, sold by All Nation. Apparently good kits.

Yes.  Zimmer also produced the 8-10(?) different kits for traction freight cars that All Nation marketed.  Very nice kits to build in several variations.  Nothing like them available from any other source.  I think I still have 1-3 left to build.  I have suggested years ago that LaBelle scale up its line of HO traction freight car kits to O but nothing yet.

I don't know the whole story, or connection, between Zimmer and A-N but Zimmer made some really cool, one of a kind kits.  Examples would be, the ACL Watermelon/Ventilated car, AT&SF Panel Side & extended top box cars, numerous NP box cars like the fish belly box car with a truss rod on each side.  Many more.  I'm lucky enough to have a fair number of these kits.  Hope to build a few someday.  Probably end up like so many kits...part of a future estate sale.

Jay