Athearn Bluebox And SP

Around 1980 I met a guy named Howard Moore at the old Troxel Brothers Models on Western Avenue in Los Angeles. He was an employee of Athearn in the very early days and a photographer. I'm not sure how long he actually worked for him, but he stayed friends with Irvin Athearn for many years. (He reported that by the 1970s, Irvin Athearn had become discouraged that modelers weren't supporting his new products, like the PA-1, Train Master, etc, and was reluctant to upgrade the line.)

When Howard worked for him, Irvin sent him out to take photos of rail equipment in Los Angeles. These became the inspiration for many Athearn metal cars in the late 1940s, in both O and HO scales. He showed me many 8 x 10 prints he'd made, including a black SP Overnight boxcar and a Santa Fe map boxcar. He also took other photos in the early postwar years, prints for many of which I bought from him. In the early 1960s he was shooting 8mm movie film, and he showed me some of these. I assume he has passed away, and I doubt if the film has survived.

By the time I knew him, he had a small desk-sized layout in his apartment. I wound up helping him paint and detail bluebox and comparable stuff at the time. Here's a shot he took of some locos I helped him with at the time on his layout:

Here's a bluebox S-12 that I worked on. This was before Detail Associates came out with its SP Baldwin headlight castings, I did these from styrene:

Here's a bluebox SD9. I think he wanted me to give it an SD9E number:

Bluebox stuff wasn't that bad!